Geldof complains about eBay Live8 ticket sales
Today, Bob Geldof described sales of Live8 tickets on eBay as "a disgrace". Sorry Bob, but you've only got yourself to blame, if you're going to give tickets away in a text lottery for £1.50 when people are willing to pay £100+ then maybe you shouldn't be in charge of raising money for charity.
The text lottery raised £3,000,000 about £40 for each of the 75,000 tickets which were sold. Considering the line up I would have thought the tickets would be worth more than that, and since they are selling on eBay for over £100 I would have thought right. At £100 a pop Geldof would have raised £7,500,000 which when you take the costs of organising the concert off is a 4 times increase in revenue.
Accusing the touts of making money on the back of a charity is all well and good but whether they go or someone else goes and they pocket £100 doesn't change the actual amount of money made. The tickets have been sold at their ridiculous low price now, the damage has been done, unless all those with tickets/that want tickets follow Wilkie's patent pending money raising method.
If you want a ticket, work out how much it is worth to you; find someone with a ticket and tell them your price. They must then either donate the difference to the charity and keep their ticket or you donate your money to charity and get their ticket. Of course any money they have already donated is offset against your price.
Since the point of the concert is to raise as much money as possible, I can't see any justification for holding onto a ticket if you are not willing to donate it's value yourself.
Alternatively there's plan B; scrap the concert and give the £1.5 million which would have been spent to charity, no-one can complain since £1.5 million to charity is much better than seeing your favourite bands play live.
The text lottery raised £3,000,000 about £40 for each of the 75,000 tickets which were sold. Considering the line up I would have thought the tickets would be worth more than that, and since they are selling on eBay for over £100 I would have thought right. At £100 a pop Geldof would have raised £7,500,000 which when you take the costs of organising the concert off is a 4 times increase in revenue.
Accusing the touts of making money on the back of a charity is all well and good but whether they go or someone else goes and they pocket £100 doesn't change the actual amount of money made. The tickets have been sold at their ridiculous low price now, the damage has been done, unless all those with tickets/that want tickets follow Wilkie's patent pending money raising method.
If you want a ticket, work out how much it is worth to you; find someone with a ticket and tell them your price. They must then either donate the difference to the charity and keep their ticket or you donate your money to charity and get their ticket. Of course any money they have already donated is offset against your price.
Since the point of the concert is to raise as much money as possible, I can't see any justification for holding onto a ticket if you are not willing to donate it's value yourself.
Alternatively there's plan B; scrap the concert and give the £1.5 million which would have been spent to charity, no-one can complain since £1.5 million to charity is much better than seeing your favourite bands play live.
posted by Unknown at 6:03 PM
3 Comments:
I'm pretty sure the point of the concerts is to raise awareness rather than money. As soon as there is sufficient awareness and therefore pressure on the governments then the governments will scrap the debts. This will more than make up for a few measly million or two from ticket sales!
If the point is to raise awareness then making money from reselling the tickets shouldn't matter, the touts aren't taking money away from anyone and it's no worse than some of the artists who are playing Live 8 and will enjoy increased record sales on the back of it.
Raising a couple of million for charity on the back of the event is surely a worthwhile thing to do.
Most of the 3 million people who responded to the txt lottery don't give a toss about the debt of African nations, they just wanted a chance to see their favourite bands on stage.
Favourite Bands .... you've seen the Edinburgh line up right ;-)
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