Ticketmaster: Beijing sold most Olympic tickets ever

Ticketing giant Ticketmaster said 6.8 million tickets to the Beijing Olympics were sold around the world, the most ever for the Olympic Games, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company hopes to use its experience handling ticket sales for the games to bolster its presence in the Chinese market. Ticketmaster’s online Olympic ticket-vending site collapsed during its first round of sales in April, and the lack of a widely used online payment system in China posed additional challenges. These problems were largely addressed in later sales rounds. Despite the high volume of ticket sales, many seats at Olympic events were empty, which officials attributed to scheduling, while others claimed it was due to the high number of tickets given to sponsors that went unused.