The recent meltdown of Beijing's online ticket-sales system for the 2008 Games came as a surprise to many -- and as a huge frustration to millions of unsuccessful ticket purchasers. Beijing after all has been so forward-leaning in erecting Olympics venues that at one point China's leaders -- all nine of the top guys were trained as engineers -- were politely advised to slow down construction to avoid completing some buildings too soon. So well you might ask how organizers could have fumbled the ball so badly on Oct. 30, when 1.85 million tickets went on sale -- and the official sales website crashed after attracting more than 8 million hits from eager buyers? Manuela Zonensein in Beijing explains:

It seems Chinese authorities weren’t quite ready to serve the people. Tuesday Wei Jizhong, a consultant to the Beijing Games organizing committee, was quoted by the state-run Beijing News as saying the vast potential size of the local audience means "first-come, first-served doesn't fit China". When sales resume Dec. 10, organizers will revert to a lottery system – similar to that used in the first phase of sales last April--to determine who’ll be allowed to purchase tickets. The organizing committee says this approach will adhere more closely to “principles of fairness, impartiality, and convenience to the public." And that’s about the only explanation the public has received regarding last week's disastrous launch.

It’s still unclear how authorities could have underestimated – by eight times – local demand for Olympics tickets. They hinted that demand was inflated due to ticket hoarding and speculators; indeed shortly after the first phase of ticket sales kicked off, Chinese websites featured scalped tickets selling for as high as RMB 150,000 (more than USD 20,000).

Part of authorities’ explanation was that, with 1.3 billion people, China has more aspiring buyers than Sydney or Athens, but around the same number of tickets will be sold. Therefore the ticket-selling mechanisms that served those two cities’ Olympics proved inadequate for the task in China. Haven’t we learned by now that size matters? “What was driving their expectations?” wondered David Wolf, President and CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a technology communications firm, “That you're not going to have more people [wanting tickets] than Sydney, Atlanta, Sarajevo, Los Angeles?"

Could it be that the technological infrastructure established by Chinese organizers, especially the number of servers and bandwidth, was inadequate? Guo Liang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who is scheduled to release a report on Web 2.0 in China to the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, dismissed that possibility: "It's really not so difficult to get more." (US$400million has already been earmarked for IT and communications hardware, software and expertise.) As for whether the system had been tested beforehand, Hou Xinyi, deputy director of the technology department at BOCOG, had been quoted by media as saying, “To reduce risk, there will be a lot of tests before the Games.”

In the absence of more concrete information from authorities, many analysts assume there was some disconnect in internal coordination, though the point of breakdown remains unclear. One way to make sense of the snafu, Wolf says, “ is if there was intentional disregard of advice, or you don't have people talking to each other. It comes down to a systemic issue."

Could such systemic issues — both organizationally and technologically —snarl up Beijing’s efforts to ensure a seamless event? The ticketing glitch could teach authorities a lesson, and compel them to install an adequate IT structure and the administrative network to support it. The ultimate test will be, Wolf says, “once tickets go back on sale, and when the Games—which are going to attract tremendous global attention—start.” Of more than 7 million tickets that will be sold, 75% are reserved for the domestic audience. Of course, Beijing can’t host the Olympics and have too few Chinese show up.