Sport
1.85 million tickets for Olympics to go on sale this week

Bejing (PTI): Around 1.85 million tickets for the 2008 Olympic Games here will be up for sale in the second round of booking from Tuesday, the state media reported.

Ticket prices for 28 sports sessions range from 30 Yuan to 1,000 Yuan and the most expensive will be the tickets for the opening ceremony on August 8, which would cost up to 5,000 Yuan, it said.

The tickets will be sold on the first come, first serve basis at this stage, Rong Jun, head of the Beijing Olympics Organising Committee (BOCOG) ticketing centre said.

"One can buy a maximum of 50 tickets and the two-ticket limit is applied for 'high-demand events'," Rong was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

Excluding tickets reserved for the Olympic Family, sponsors and rights holding broadcasters, more than seven million tickets are available for sale, with about 40 per cent reserved for domestic sale.

In the first round of sale between April and August, 63,000 tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 91,000 seat capacity stadium and over two million tickets for the sports events were sold.

To keep the ticket prices within the reach of average Chinese residents, about 58 per cent of the tickets are priced at 100 Yuans (about $ 13.3) or below, and 14 per cent will be earmarked for Chinese students for 10 Yuans or less.

BOCOG is confident that income from the sales of ticket would hit the targeted figure of about $ 140 million.

Sport

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