Thaindian News

Just hours after Michael Jackson fans were notified if they had won tickets to the entertainers memorial at the Los Angeles Staples Center on Tuesday, tickets for the closed event started appearing online for sale.

The ads were placed on Craigslist and eBay, with one advertiser listing a set of tickets for the main Staples Centre event with a Buy it Now price of $25,000.

More than 1.6 million people applied for the 8,750 pairs of tickets available for the show, with 11,000 for the Staples Center and 6,500 for the Nokia Theater next door.

The remainder of the 20,000-seat capacity Staples Centre has been reserved for Jackson’s family, friends, guests and the news media.

Ticket winners yesterday received a special code and instructions to pick up their tickets at Dodger Stadium on Monday, today.

When the winners collect their tickets they will receive a wristband, part of an effort to prevent people from trying to sell the tickets. If the bands become ripped, taped or appear tampered, they will be no longer valid.

Organizers said the memorial will not be shown on the giant video screens in the Staples Center plaza to keep crowd levels under control, but arrangements have been made for a world-wide TV broadcast and streaming feed on the Internet.

City officials have urged residents to watch the memorial from home, but many fans have signaled that they intend to show up anyway.

Los Angeles police officials are bracing for tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, but have not given an estimate of what it may cost to control the event, whose lineup and other details have also not been announced.

Los Angeles is battling a recession-fueled $530 million deficit in its operating budget, but Jan Perry, a city councilwoman who is serving as acting mayor, said, that the city considered the memorial an “extraordinary event” and would tap into a fund set aside for such occurrences.

Plans for Jackson’s burial, expected to be private, have not been disclosed, though it has been reported the dead entertain will be buried in a $25,000 casket made of solid bronze and plated with 14-karat gold.