By Kate Holton
Internet auction site eBay ended a sale of free Live 8 tickets on Tuesday after Bob Geldof, the organizer of the awareness-raising concerts, labeled the site an "electronic pimp" and urged people to swamp it.
Tickets to the star-studded London show, which aims to pressure world leaders into fighting poverty in Africa, were given away to the winners of a text lottery. But they immediately started appearing on eBay for hundreds of pounds.
Geldof criticized the site and urged people to swamp it with bogus offers of tickets or massively inflated bids.
"What I would ask you to do tonight is to get on eBay and mess up the system," he told Sky News.
"Everyone should go on and pretend they have got tickets for Live 8 ... otherwise go on and bid ridiculous amounts of money for the tickets already on the site," said the feisty Irish rocker.
His appeal did not go unheeded. Within minutes bids which had been running in the hundreds of pounds surged to 10 million pounds.
eBay, which earlier on Tuesday rejected Geldof's call to end the sale saying there was nothing illegal about it, capitulated.
"eBay has decided to not allow the resale of Live 8 tickets on the site," a spokesman told Reuters.
"We have listened to eBay's community of users and the message has been clear -- that they do not want the tickets to be sold on the site. Once we are made aware of any Live 8 tickets being resold they will be taken down," he added.
Geldof organized the July 2 concert 20 years after his Live Aid sensation which raised money to help the starving in Ethiopia.
Rather than raise money, the 2005 concert aims to raise the profile of African poverty and influence leaders of the G8 group of industrialized nations who meet in Scotland next month.
Four other concerts will be held in Paris, Rome, Berlin and Philadelphia on the same day and a sixth on July 6 in Edinburgh -- the day the two-day G8 summit starts in nearby Gleneagles.
More than 2 million text messages were sent by people hoping to get tickets in the draw.
Performers for the London concert include a reformed Pink Floyd, U2, Paul McCartney, Coldplay, Madonna and REM.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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