(BEIJNG, August 23) -- More than 300,000 people across the Chinese mainland will soon be apprised that they have managed to book tickets for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) released the outcome of the first phase of its ticketing scheme on Thursday. As a result, the lottery winners of high demand tickets will be notified shortly.

The first phase of the Olympic ticket sales began on April 15, 2007 and ended at midnight, June 30, 2007. During this period, the Beijing Olympic ticketing center received more than 720,000 applications requesting 5.18 million tickets. Due to higher demand for some tickets, 72% of the 2.2 million tickets available to the public during Phase I were sold.

All 26,000 tickets for the opening ceremony available during the first phase were sold out, with only one lucky winner for every 21 applications. For the closing ceremony, 1/7 of the 172,219 applicants were lucky enough to get tickets. The top five most popular events based on ticket requests were basketball, diving, table tennis, football, and gymnastics.

To ensure the fairness of the sales procedure, for every event's ticket price category for which demand exceeded supply, a lottery system was used. Ticket lottery winners represent all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities of the Chinese mainland, with 44% of ticket lottery winners from Beijing.

Beijing residents accounted for 46% of the total Phase I ticket applications. A significant number of applications also came from Guangdong province, Shanghai, Hebei province, Jiangsu province, and Zhejiang province.