A total of 1.38 million tickets were to be released in the third round of ticket sales that began today for 16 sports, including boxing, football, baseball, beach volleyball and wrestling.

 

But many customers were unable to complete their purchase because they could not reach the final payment page.

 

A message reading, "The system is under maintenance. Please visit the page later" appeared on the screen.

 

The website kept directing users back to the login page, and finally showed a message apologising for not being able to process the purchase.

 

The former director of the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Centre was sacked in November after the online system collapsed due to overwhelming demand almost immediately after the second round of sales began.

 

In the first three hours of the October sale, the site received 20 million hits, BOCOG had said.

 

As a result of the system crash, only 43,000 of the 1.85 million tickets reserved for the second round were allocated.

 

BOCOG had promised there would be no repeat of problems that had marred previous ticket sales.

 

Two-thirds of the seven million tickets available to the public have been sold but there has been complaints among parents and relatives of British competitors that it is impossible to get tickets for events such as swimming and judo in which their children are competing.

 

Last month, organisers unveiled for the first time the design for the tickets, which have many high-tech features to prevent fraud and copying.