Live 8 ticket sales 'sick'
2005-06-14 12:09
London - It was perhaps inevitable. No sooner had the first tickets for next month's Live 8 charity concert in London been allocated than some began appearing on Tuesday for sale on internet auction site eBay.
Irish pop star-turned aid activist Bob Geldof, who is organising the event, described the sales as "sick" and threatened to launch a court case to force eBay to end them.
More than two million cellphone text messages were sent in a lottery to win the 150 000 tickets to the London show on July 2, starring Paul McCartney, Elton John and REM, among others.
The first winners were informed on Monday that they had received tickets, and some immediately offered them for sale on the popular website.
Some tickets to the event, offered as pairs, had already attracted bids of more than £400 only a few hours after the sales opened.
However, other eBay users appeared to have registered their own disapproval by lodging presumably frivolous - and unbeatable - bids of £10m or similar sums for other sets of tickets.
'An electronic pimp'
Geldof told Tuesday's Daily Mirror newspaper that he was furious at eBay for allowing the sales, labelling the firm "an electronic pimp".
"I am sick with this," he said. "It is completely against the interests of the poor. The people who are selling it (tickets) are wretches."
Live 8, which will see parallel events in Philadelphia in the United States, Paris, Rome and Berlin, is not intended to be a money-making event, meaning tickets have been distributed for free.
Instead, Geldof hopes it will raise awareness of African poverty, debt relief and fair trade ahead of the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, starting on July 6.
A spokesperson for the British arm of eBay said that while the firm would donate the fees it received from any Live 8 ticket sales to charity, it would not stop them being sold.
"The reselling of charity concert tickets is not illegal under UK law, so Live 8 tickets are allowed to be resold on ebay.co.uk," she said.
"We are allowing the tickets because we live in a free market where people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell.