A total of 1.38 million tickets were to be released in the third round of ticket sales that began on Monday for 16 sports, including boxing, football, baseball, beach volleyball and wrestling. But while people were able to log on to the website and select tickets fairly easily, they could not reach the final payment page, receiving instead a message reading “The system is under maintenance. Please visit the page later".
The website also kept directing users back to the login page, and finally showed a message apologising for not being able to process the purchase. Officials at the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games had no immediate comment.
Two-thirds of the seven million tickets available to the public have been sold, tickets for popular events, such as basketball, have already sold out.
