anacapamalibu

Probably not if you only read Xinhua news.

"Dark clouds over Olympia troubled Olympic flame lighting rehearsal parted at last Monday with a flawless torch lighting ceremony heralding the unprecedented torch relay. "

iahphx

I'm sorry, but that is insane. Comparable accomodations will be available for a small fraction of that if you're patient.

dannyyu

Looks like the phase III tickets are ready to go for this afternoon.... Will be checking their site often today.

dannyyu

They just told me that there won't be any ordering over the phone at all and must do endless refreshes of their site to order

california09

Just got tickets to Track and Field the evening of 15 Aug. The site is slow, but is working.

iahphx

A fiasco today (but what else would you expect from the Olympic ticketing folks). Obviously, their systems were incapable of processing the demand. I had some Athletics tickets for the 16th in my cart and the system wouldn't let me check out. I then waited a few minutes, got them back in my cart, and then the system removed them from my cart. Now sold out.

Thanks guys!

iahphx

Well, through sheer determination, I was able to get my Athletics tickets. I must have clicked 50 times in the last couple of hours and, finally -- miraculously -- some went back into inventory. This time the checkout system was slow, but it worked (no doubt because most had already given up).

I didn't see anymore tickets for the Aug. 16 night Athletics (which features the 100M men's finals), but a few minutes ago there were other good track and field finals still available. Not many other top-tiered events were offered this time, however, mostly prelims in second-tier sports.

It seems like this will be the final official ticket sale. I guess I'll now have to play the secondary market, particularly once I arrive in Beijing. I'm a bit afraid of counterfeit tickets (we're talking China here!), but at least the face value is so low, I can pay twice face for most events and still get a reasonable value.

jiejie

Yeah, after hours of trying (starting the wee hours of the morning here in Beijing), I was finally able to get a couple of ticket orders successfully purchased on the US site--one in my name, and one for a friend who mistimed her travel. First few attempts, I also got dumped and the cart emptied before I could check out. I did manage to get some Athletics finals (including the one on the 16th), the 5th or 6th try, after the tickets got recycled back around from somebody else's dumped cart. Maddening--I hope Cosport comes up with a better system before 2010 & 2012.

I now get to wait and try my luck in China's Phase 3 ticket sale, which is supposed to start in April but who knows? BOCOG has been quiet on exactly how they are going to sell these puppies, as the previous Phase 2 (attempts A and B) didn't exactly go as planned. Not sure whether they will try yet another lottery, or just let buyers duke it out via hand-to-hand combat at the venues or centralized ticket offices.

Jerry_Maguire

I was checking all day waiting for the tickets to come on line. When they did, I wasted about 90 minutes staying late at the office adding tickets to my cart only to get server errors when halfway through the check out process.

I tried again at home, this time using Explorer instead of Firefox, and things went much smoother, though pickings were slimmer. Got tickets to Rowing on 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th, and evening track sessions on 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th, which covered the period I was looking for.

So those that had trouble, what browser were you using? It seems the CoSport website doesn't like Firefox.

iahphx

I was using Explorer, so I don't think it was a browser issue.

A little surprised to see CoSport swamped. I sure doesn't seem like "the world" is rushing to these Olympic games. But I guess they're really the only source of tickets for non-Chinese (and obviously some Chinese are using it too), so the traffic is still too much for them.

jiejie

Huh? No, Cosport is not the only source of tickets for the non-Chinese. The UK, much of Europe, Oceania have to get official tickets through Sportsworld (UK-based company) and most other countries through a designated travel agent in their own country, or their National Olympic Committee. Unless they are overseas residents in a Cosport country, most Chinese wouldn't have the ability to order through the site anyway, as payment would be a problem.

No, I think the problem is Cosport's inadequate servers and an ordering system that funnelled all Cosport users to one central order and processing system, instead of separating out countries (or at least the biggest, the USA) into different systems on different servers. This was also a problem in Phase 2 online sales, you'd think they'd have fixed the problem in the last 4 months. But I've always suspected the supposedly separate ticket allocations for each country were actually being pooled by Cosport, so we were all scrambling for the same tickets--otherwise, why would handball on the USA event page be selling equally quickly as on the Bulgarian page, or why baseball on the Bulgarian page is selling equally to that on the USA page, etc etc. This would also explain Cosport's real lack of separation and diversion of the online traffic into different streams.

It's also possible the site was being mass-accessed by reps/buyers for the secondary ticket brokers, as well as by those trying to actually attend the Games.

iahphx

Thanks, jiejie. I was under the mistaken impression that most non-Chinese ticket sales were going through CoSport (because, as you noted, they have links to so many country "sites"). I hadn't heard of Sportsworld. Is there any value in trying to follow these other country sales? I've had my friends in China try (unsuccessfully so far) to get me tickets, but I haven't tapped any friends in Europe. But if the situation is anything like CoSport, I can't really ask for folks to go to that kind of effort for me!

I suspect you are right about brokers/scalpers trying to get tickets, and that all of the CoSport allocations were pooled.

jiejie

No, I don't really think there is any point right now--everybody all over the world is in the same boat, BOCOG just won't release enough tickets. The local Chinese are in even worse shape, due to overwhelming demand layered on a huge demographic. And for some events like swimming, there isn't any amount of ticket release that would satisfy demand. There is supposed to be a Chinese Phase 3 sale starting this month, format yet to be announced. I suspect the Chinese are unlikely to release (m)any more tickets to international agents. After the Chinese Phase 3 sale has subsided, any remaining unsold tickets will go to central booking offices and/or venues to be sold in real-time. My guess is this last-minute sale will not happen until after all tickets have been printed and sent out worldwide to fulfill confirmed bookings--probably late July. Same for any returns coming back from sponsors and other organizations. Cosport, Sportsworld, etc will have offices set up to distribute any remaining tickets from their allocations, but I don't expect to see much out of that. Anyone who is planning on being in Beijing a couple of weeks in advance might have an opportunity to grab some last minute available tickets directly from BOCOG, but you'd be taking a chance. More than previous Games, I think a large number of events will be sold out before the show even begins.

Depending on your cash reserves vs sports desire, you may be forced to the secondary market either while you are in the USA, or wait until you get to Beijing. If you decide to wait until Beijing, try to use the intervening months to make contacts and queries. Some of us have quite a few extra tickets but need to get through the Chinese Phase 3 before finalizing our Use vs Dispose ticket categories.

iahphx

What do you think the ultimate response of the Chinese to attending the Games will be? The Chinese I know (admittedly only a few, and by no means representative of the population) don't seem too interested -- including those who live in Beijing! That's typically been the reaction of professionals in other cities that have hosted the Games. They tend to be worried about the "enormous hassles" (which usually don't materialize), and flee town for the Games.

Are the Chinese different, or will we see the same pattern as before?

jiejie

Don't kid yourself. Though as you've found, cheerleading for the Games is by no means universal among individual Chinese, there is plenty of general interest in attending the events, you just have to run into the right people to hear the other side. The venues for most things will be full. Beijing alone has 15 million people (not including the migrant workers and non-Chinese citizens)--even if only 20% had any interest, that's still 3 million people right there. And the local ticket prices are well-priced, even by Chinese urban middle class standards, so there are millions of people in Beijing and the wealthy east coast cities that can afford tickets to at least some sports. The common refrain I've heard among the local Chinese I know is that obtaining tickets themselves is the biggest hassle and next to impossible, but if they could get hold of some to an event of interest, they'd definitely attend. In the past 7 months, the "Good Luck Beijing" series of events has introduced a lot of Olympic sports to the local population that were not well known, (beach volleyball, fencing, etc.) as well as the popular things like swimming, diving, gymnastics, table tennis. The events I have been to were very well attended, and in some cases nearly sold out.

I don't personally know too many Beijing residents fleeing town for the Games, but I'm sure there will be some of that, but not enough to make a statistically meaningful improvement in your/our chance at getting more tickets.