Organisers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games have announced two more ticket lotteries for Japan residents after abandoning plans for a first-come, first-served phase, the Japan Times reports.
The next lottery in August will be considered a second chance for the millions of fans that missed out in the first draw, which concluded last month. This round will largely be for tickets to qualifiers and first-round events.
A third lottery, which will be open to all domestic fans, will be held in the autumn. Organisers agreed to forgo the first-come, first-served ticketing round scheduled for this time due to fears over a repeat of heavy website traffic, according to the Japan Times.
The Tokyo 2020 ticketing site experienced a surge of web traffic during the launch of the domestic ticket application process on May 9, which ran through until May 28.
Organisers were forced to extend the deadline for the Olympic ticket lottery by 12 hours to ensure every application was processed as millions of fans raced to register their interest in the event.
In total, Tokyo 2020 ID registrations, the first step required before purchasers could enter the ticket lottery, reached 7.51 million. The official ticketing website was visited more than 24.25 million times in the 20 days that the application period was open.
Organisers have said that the number of fan ID registrations is almost the same amount as the available 7.8 million tickets.
The cheapest individual tickets for the Games will cost Y2,500 (£17.17/€19.86/$22.34).
Image: Marco Verch
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