Beijing Olympic ticket allocation

Last week I received an email from the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, informing me about the results for the tickets that I had ordered. It was a bit disappointing, most of the events that I booked tickets for where sold out and I mainly got tickets for some athletics and some swimming events. I was also among the happy few that got a ticket for the closing ceremony (but not for the opening ceremony).

My wife also just got a few tickets, and not even a ticket for the opening or closing ceremony. Several of her family members did not succeed to get any tickets at all! It seems most of the events are completely sold out now already, I had not expected this actually. Maybe many people hope to sell their tickets at a higher price during the Olympics? You are allowed to sell your ticket to someone else (but only once I think), so I expect heavy trading during the games itself. Maybe I will sell my closing ceremony ticket (only 14% of the applicants got a ticket, so there will be quite some demand), because I don’t think it’s a lot of fun to go there on my own. Or maybe I just give it away, I’ll see next year.

If you live in China and did not order tickets online yet, you will have a second chance in October. On a first-come first-serve basis the remaining 600,000 tickets will be sold off, but these are probably only for less popular events. I hope the servers of the Olympics site are prepared for the heavy traffic that might suddenly hit it.