Olympic tickets are hard to come by

BEIJING -- It is not as though all 1.3 billion people in China are trying to attend the Olympics.

It just seems that way if you're trying to book a seat. Tickets to the 2008 Games are proving to be among the most coveted in sporting history.

Money, luck, persistence, computer skills and, in some cases, the right political background are among the prerequisites.

Scalpers already are demanding as much as $40,000 a seat for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony, and tickets for popular sports such as basketball, gymnastics and pingpong (a particular Chinese favorite) are going for 10 times their face value.

The crushing demand for the roughly 7 million tickets that the Beijing Olympic Committee is putting on sale for the general public comes from inside and out: Americans and Europeans who have long dreamed of visiting China and think the Olympics will be the right occasion, and middle-class Chinese families who want to watch with pride as their nation celebrates what is widely touted as a coming-out party.

On the domestic market, ticket seekers have been frustrated by long lines and crashing computer systems. A disproportionate number of those who mastered the system were students and professionals in the information technology field who were able to elbow their way to the front of electronic queues.

"You could buy tickets with a couple of clicks of the mouse, but you had to know what you were doing," said Li Dong, a 29-year-old executive at a Beijing computer firm.

Two rounds of lotteries to buy tickets have yielded far more losers than winners. The disappointed are pleading their case for tickets on Ganji.com, which is sort of the Craig's List of China.

"I want my parents to see the Olympics. Please help me fulfill my dream," advertised one dutiful son.

Another plaintive request came on behalf of China's past Olympians.

"These retired athletes don't have much money. They're not good with computers. They won't stand a chance on their own," said Ji Ting, a 31-year-old former television executive who posted the ad for the Olympic Star Security Fund, a charity she set up last year to buy tickets for former Olympians.

The charity has so far been unable to purchase a single ticket through the regular distribution network, so it is imploring the Beijing organizers to donate a few dozen tickets -- at least enough to give to one gold medalist from each of China's 23 provinces.