Millions of Michael Jackson fans around the world are anxiously sitting by their computers waiting to see if they have been one of the lucky winners of tickets for the memorial concert at the Los Angeles Staples Centre on Tuesday.
Organizers of the show were to begin informing registrants on Sunday if they had been awarded one of the 8,750 pairs of free tickets to the event.
In the 32-hour window that mourning Jackson fans had to register for the event, more than 1.6 million applications were received.
Each person whose name is drawn will receive two tickets and will be notified by email after 11am PST (2 pm EDT) Sunday with instructions on where to go on Monday to collect their tickets.
The tickets will include a wristband, part of an effort to prevent people from trying to sell the tickets.
The Staples Center has a capacity of nearly 20,000 for sporting events but the organizers said only 11,000 fans will be admitted to the arena for the memorial performance, with the remainder reserved for Jackson’s family, friends, guests and the news media. At the Nokia theater next door 6,500 fans will be admitted.
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.
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