More than one million Tokyo 2020 hopefuls were left hanging on a holding page for up to three hours earlier today (Thursday) as they waited to discover whether they had been successful in the Olympic ticket lottery.
While no specific time was given for the allocation announcement, as organisers sought to avoid a spike in visitors, a major surge of traffic peaked during the morning commute in Japan at 7am.
The announcements, which were first made available at 2am, only affect Japanese fans that applied for tickets. According to the organisers, approximately 1.35 million people were left on the holding page for three hours.
Between 70 and 80 per cent of the total allocation has been reserved for domestic sales, with Tokyo 2020’s original bid saying that 7.8 million tickets would be up for grabs.
Tickets allocated in the lottery must be purchased by midnight on July 2, and applicants must purchase all tickets allocated, or none.
Organisers have suggested that people check their ticket status during off-peak hours and to buy their allocated tickets prior to the July 2 deadline. Any tickets that were allocated, but not bought by the above date, will be returned to the pool for another round of sales.
Specific ticket details, such as seat numbers, will be released after next spring as many venues’ plans have not been finalised yet.
The Tokyo 2020 ticketing site experienced a similar 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.
The cheapest individual tickets for the Games will cost Y2,500 (£17.17/€19.86/$22.34).
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics will run from July 24 to August 9.
Image: Tokyo 2020
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