Volume heavy as tickets for 2010 Winter Olympics go on sale

VANCOUVER — Demand for tickets to the 2010 Winter Olympics appeared to be heavy in the first eight hours after tickets went on sale Friday, organizers said.

"We had about 30 times our normal volume when we turned it on first thing this morning," said Caley Denton, the Vancouver Olympic Committee's vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing.

Demand for the estimated 1.6 million tickets publicly available tickets was steady from all across Canada, he said.

Sales are not on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, organizers have established a five-week process designed to give would-be spectators ample time to make choices.

The process was also designed to thwart scalpers trying to snap up tickets to the best events before anyone else had a chance to even whip out a credit card.

"We did a lot of load testing on the site," Denton said of the five years of planning that preceded the launch at midnight Pacific time.

"We knew we would get high volume but at the same time we did a lot of testing to make sure we could handle it, and it is going as planned."

The organizing committee will accept applications until Nov. 7. Tickets will be allocated after that.

If there is more demand for an event than there are seats, a lottery will be held and winners will be notified late next month or early in December.

Requests can be submitted either online or through a paper application. Purchasers must register an account at Vancouver2010.com.