All 1.38 million tickets for the Beijing Games available in the third phase of domestic ticketing have been booked, but fans should not give up hope, BOCOG spokesman Wang Hui said Wednesday.
People who fail to make the May 14 payment deadline will have their tickets put up for re-sale during the Games, she said.
"All the tickets for events in Beijing and Hong Kong have been sold out, and only a few tickets for soccer preliminaries in co-host cities are still available," Wang added.
The third leg of domestic sales, which kicked off on May 5, was met with overwhelming demand as 27 million people logged onto the official ticketing website within the first hour.
Tickets for 16 sports including soccer, volleyball and basketball were available in this round.
Parents attempting to buy tickets for young children struggled as they lacked the required identification cards, prompting officials to suggest they quickly obtain temporary IDs to snap up their tickets in time.
Beijing Olympic organizers are also seeing an unprecedented level of demand for tickets from overseas spectators, Rong Jun, deputy director of the BOCOG Ticketing Center, said Tuesday.
Overseas ticket sales are arranged through local Olympic Games Committees or agencies in each nation or region. So far, more than 180 committees have applied for tickets for this summer's Olympic Games, almost twice the number of applicants at the Athens Games in 2004.
Foreigners who work or study in China can buy tickets, the same as Chinese citizens, through any designated Bank of China ticket outlets, or at the official ticketing website.
For foreigners outside China, the only legal channel to buy tickets at this stage is to apply to the local Olympic Committees or agencies, Rong said, adding during the Olympic Games, foreigners in China can also buy tickets in box offices around the venues.
