Rugby fans snapped up just 3,000 of the 8,000 Hong Kong Sevens tickets that went on sale yesterday.
After the poor response at the Hong Kong Stadium, Rugby Football Union officials said another public sale would be held this Saturday at the same venue.
The Sevens will be staged at the stadium from March 26-28.
Teenagers Karina O'Carroll, Laura Bruce and Iain Mungall were first in the queue for the second year running.
'We want it to be a tradition . . . that we are the first to buy tickets,' said 16-year-old Iain, who arrived with his friends at 1am yesterday.
Karina said: 'We expected quite a few more people to turn up. But people started queuing only from around 7.30am. We spent the night playing cards and slept a bit on the terrace.' When the box office opened at 2pm, there were just 218 people in the queue - a far cry from previous years when thousands queued all night to snap up a limited number of tickets. Last year, there were estimated to be just under 1,000 in the queue.