The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Beijing

The final tickets for next month's Beijing Olympics will go on sale at event venues this week, Games organisers said today.

About 820,000 tickets were left unsold in three previous tranches that saw huge domestic demand, Beijing Games spokesman Sun Weide told AFP.

They will go on sale Friday in Beijing and co-host cities Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao, he said.

The announcement contradicted a previous statement by organisers, who said all of the tickets for domestic sale had already sold out.

Sun said the earlier announcement was incorrect.

About 250,000 tickets will be for events in nearly all Olympic sports in Beijing, he said.

The rest will be for Olympic football competitions in the co-host cities.

Beijing had allocated around 75 percent of the seven million tickets in total to its vast domestic audience, with the rest made available overseas through each country's national Olympic committee.

In the second phase last October, huge demand crashed the computer sales system, forcing that round to be suspended. It was resumed a month later.

Beijing, the venue for the vast majority of events, and its co-host cities will stage the Games from August 8-24.