The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Beijing

Tickets for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics are being illegally scalped online for up to 20 times their face value, state press reported today.

The Beijing News said hundreds of tickets to the August 8 ceremony, the most sought-after of all events in the Games, were available on Chinese Internet commerce sites. The newspaper said 5,000-yuan (725-dollar) tickets to the ceremony were available on the web for 100,000 yuan. Closing ceremony tickets also were on sale at a large mark-up.

Three rounds of Games' ticket sales in China since last year have been met with huge demand, in which millions of tickets were snapped up.

A thriving black market for those who initially missed out has emerged despite a system requiring that the names of the original buyers be printed on the tickets.

Police have responded with a clampdown, arresting hundreds of people, state media said last month.

The Beijing News said buyers who purchased scalped tickets online were meeting with sellers at branches of the Bank of China -- the official ticket outlets-to officially change the names on those tickets.

Olympic organisers said earlier that the most popular ticket in the first round of sales last year was for the opening ceremony, with 4.7 percent of those who applied getting one.