BEIJING (AP):

BEIJING ORGANISERS will try again to sell Olympic tickets online.

The final batch of domestic-market tickets - 1.38 million - will go on sale beginning May 5, organisers announced yesterday. Tickets will be sold at Bank of China outlets and on an official website, with sales closing on June 9. The Beijing Olympics open on August 8.

Overwhelming demand for tickets caused a computer system to crash after just a few hours when the previous sales phase opened six months ago, forcing organisers to revert to a lottery system.

Lottery system

The lottery system was also used in the initial phase of domestic ticket sales.

"Well, we have only 100 days to go before the opening ceremony. We don't have enough time for a lottery draw," said Zhu Yan, director of the ticketing centre for the Beijing organising committee. "We don't have time for that to be done."

Zhu tried to give assurances that "fake or counterfeit tickets" would be difficult to produce and would be detected. Forgeries could present a problem in China, where counterfeiting of goods from DVDs to heart medicine is widespread, despite repeated crackdowns.

Ticket scalping is also widespread in China. Tickets to high-profile events often sell out quickly, frequently into the hands of scalpers planning to resell the tickets for a profit.

Anti-counterfeiting technologies

"In the process of designing the tickets, we have incorporated a series of anti-counterfeiting technologies to make faking tickets rather difficult," Zhu said. "We are sure that fake tickets will be created, but they will be low quality."

Zhu said buyers would be limited to three tickets for two sessions - a maximum of six tickets - and once those are paid for, the same buyer could apply to purchase six more.

A year ago, organisers said about 7.2 million tickets would be available for domestic and foreign sales. Yesterday, Zhu said that number had fallen to 6.8 million. He did not elaborate.