The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games
(BOCOG) has appointed a new head of ticketing in the wake of last
month's ticket sales incident.
Zhu Yan (R), the newly-appointed director of
the Olympic ticketing center, speaks at a press conference in
Beijing Nov. 30. Zhu introduced the new policy of selling Olympic
tickets.
One month after BOCOG was forced to suspend the second round of
ticket sales following a booking system meltdown because of
unexpected high demand, Zhu Yan was introduced at a press
conference on Friday as the replacement for Rong Jun as the
director of the Olympic ticketing center.
Zhu, who previously worked for the Beijing municipal government,
said that people would be restricted to eight tickets each instead
of the previous 50 when ticket sales resume under a lottery system
on Dec. 10.
"Each person could apply for tickets for only two competition
sessions, and only four tickets for each session," said Zhu.
"The new policy will give more people a chance to watch the
games, and it will prevent ticket scalpers from making profits," he
added.
Zhu didn't give the exact number of tickets available for the
second phase but said the number would be no fewer than 1.8
million.
A total of seven million tickets for the Aug. 8-24 Games are
available to the general public with nearly three quarters reserved
for domestic sales.
The first batch of 1.6 million tickets were allocated by lottery
earlier this year.
(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2007)
