EBay UK bans sale of Live 8 tickets

June 15, 2005 The UK division of eBay announced yesterday that it was removing all listings for sale of tickets for Live 8 from its eBay.co.uk site. Whilst asserting that "resale of tickets is not illegal", it stated that it was banning them in response to community pressure, and it was "absolutely the right thing to do". No similar announcements were made for any other of eBay's web sites, such as eBay.com, and no particular restrictions on the sales of event tickets with respect to Live 8 are included in eBay's resale policy.

Bob Geldof had labelled the advertising for sale of the tickets "sick profiteering". He described the community reaction as people realising that "the weakest people on our planet" were being exploited, and being "sickened by that". In response to an earlier offer by eBay to hand over to the Live 8 charity its fees from the sales, Geldof had said "It is not acceptable that a giant electronic company that makes billions upon billions then morally says 'we will just hand over our take to a charity'. It is filthy money made on the back of the poorest people on the planet. Stick it where it belongs."