Beijing Olympics ticket system crashes

Only half an hour after the start of second-round ticket sales for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the online booking system broke down.

In a statement published on Tuesday night, the Beijing Olympic Committee said they had decided to temporarily halt domestic ticket sales in the second phase to improve the technical plan.

"Because of the overwhelming volume of page visits, the technical system was unable to perform the tasks well enough, and many applicants were unable to successfully submit their applications."

Eight million hits and 200,000 orders per second overwhelmed the technical system, Chinese news site Xinhua reported.

Ticketmaster, which hosts the site, is working on a solution to the deluge. At this point only 45,000 tickets have been sold.

The organisers have released seven million tickets, although 75 percent of them are intended exclusively for the Chinese market.

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