THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE across Britain rose at dawn and hunched over their computer keyboards in the second round of bidding for tickets for the 2012 London Olympics.
But the hopes of many were dashed. The site was working — but very slowly. Olympic organizers urged ticket hopefuls to be patient.
The sales today came after two-thirds of ticket seekers failed to earn any in the first round. The 1.2 million previously unsuccessful bidders received priority in the morning sales. About 2.3 million tickets went on sale, many of them for football.
Tickets will also be sold in stages next year.
Ticket hopefuls were directed to a webpage saying:
“We are experiencing high demand. You will be automatically directed to the page requested as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.”
Even some who got to the stage of requesting tickets and providing their bank card details were then told: “Sorry we cannot process your request. Please try again later.”
A London 2012 spokeswoman said: “The system is working, it has not crashed. Due to high demand some people are being held outside the system. For those in the system it is working and transactions are going through, but we are having to hold some people back from going through the site due to high demand.”
- AP
