Live 8 Ticket Mania

As my mobile phone sits silent, I’m guessing that I didn’t win Live 8 London concert tickets. Bummer. I really wanted to go. Now I’ll have to watch it on BBC with everyone else. Looking on the bright side, at least I won’t have to stand all day, getting high off secondary smoke, only to listen to one band play three songs, followed by one hour of changing equipment for the next act. (At least, that was my experience when my friends and I went and saw the Amnesty International concert in Philadelphia in 1988.)

Just out of curiosity, I decided to check EBay, the capital of secondary markets, to see at what price tickets are being sold. At the moment, there are 422 ticket pairs up for sale. Five pairs of tickets have the highest bid-- a staggering £10 million pounds, with two more pairs at more than £9 million and three pairs at £5 million. No, those aren’t typos. Upon closer inspection, it seems as though people who have a philosophical problem with selling the tickets on EBay are driving up the prices. Some of the names of the bidders include, “don’t-bid-live8-is-for-proverty-not-profit,” and “against profit from suffering” and “charity cheaters get stuffed” and “live8istomakepovertyhistory”.

EBay seems to have its hands full, as when I look into the bid history of some of these tickets, there are dozens of bids cancelled for each of these tickets due to it being an excessive bid. Some of comments of the cancelled bids were, “I suspect the user is abusing the system.” One could argue that the seller is doing the same.

The anarchist in me applauds these people for mucking up the bidding when people are trying to profit off of Live8. If any of the sellers were to say that they would be contributing their sale’s proceeds to charity, then I’d say, let the market decide how much the ticket is worth. But since all of them seem to be trying to profit from what is a worthy cause, then I’d say, they deserve it.

But if any of you out there have won tickets and are looking for a friend to accompany you, I’m available that day.