Olympic ticket speculators may be detained and people who
purchase Olympic tickets via the black market will probably be
denied access to the Olympic Games, according to a citation of the
Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad
(BOCOG) inside a report of the Chengdu Business News on
September 6.
Olympic ticket speculators will face 10 to 15 days detention and
a fine up to 1,000 yuan, according to the Law on Public Security
Administration Punishments in China.
The BOCOG issued the warning recently in a bid to curb Olympic
ticket speculations. At the end of last month, the BOCOG released
300,000 lottery winners across the Chinese Mainland awarding
1,593,345 tickets, including 26,000 tickets for the opening
ceremony.
Ticket speculators appeared online soon after the BOCOG's phase
one release. There were almost 300 Olympic ticket transfer notices
on taobao.com, one of the busiest Customer to Customer (C2C)
websites in China, on September 5, the Shanghai Morning Post
reported a day after the lottery winners were announced. On the
website a seller nicknamed "lpr" ?listed 50,000 yuan at his
starting price for a 3,000-yuan ticket, the newspaper reported.
All the transfers of Olympic tickets should be conducted after
July of next year when the tickets would be sent out, according to
the BOCOG. And ticket owners are allowed to transfer their tickets
only once and under designated procedures. Ticket applicants for
the opening or closing ceremonies also must submit their
photos.
The first phase of Olympic tickets sales began on April 15 with
720,000 applicants participating. The second phase will begin in
October and follow a first-come-first-serve policy.
For more ticket details, please visit http://www.by33321.com/english/olympic/211689.htm
(China.org.cn by Wu Jin, September 6, 2007)