The house-full sign for the 2009 Hong Kong Sevens was hoisted after just two hours yesterday - the time it took for all 5,000 public tickets to be grabbed online and through telephone bookings.
'We are sold out. We expected the public sale of tickets to finish quickly,' said Allan Payne, Hong Kong Rugby Football Union's executive director. 'While we are happy that the Hong Kong Sevens will once again be played in front of a capacity crowd, regrettably, we know there will be a lot of disappointed people who couldn't get tickets.'
Among the many fans left without tickets for the annual rugby spectacular was HSBC banker Dilangen Jayasekera. Like hundreds of others, he couldn't get through to the Hong Kong Ticketing hotline or its online booking once sales began at 10am yesterday.
'My daughters tried to get through on the internet. They were using two separate computers from home and still couldn't get through with the server constantly crashing. I made 18 calls on my mobile phone and the lines were always jammed,' said Jayasekera.
Payne said Hong Kong Ticketing had increased its bandwidth to deal with the high demand as well as adding more lines.
'We knew there would be a huge demand. Unless we have a bigger stadium, we know there will be a lot of disappointed people every year,' Payne added.