Olympic ticket booking will switch back to the lottery system and will begin taking ticket requests from buyers in December, according to the ticketing hotline operated by the Games’ organizers.

“For the convenience of the public, the second batch of tickets will be allocated through a lottery,” says the automatic answering machine on the hotline 952008.

“Applicants can start submitting their ticket requests from December 10 and they will be accepted until December 30.”

The hotline adds details of the procedure will be disclosed later.

The Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center held a second round of ticket allocation on October 30 but suspended the system in the early evening that day as the first-come-first-serve rule caused the computer system to crash.

The center issued an apology the second day, saying the processing system received 20 million hits in first three hours.

Director of the ticketing center Rong Jun also promised to present another solution on November 5.