SOME SCALP SERVICE SEATS
While thousands waited in line for hours to secure a free ticket to the Muhammad Ali memorial service Friday, some are willing to part with their piece of history — for the right price.
The tickets, and many, many pleas for tickets, have flooded sites such as Craigslist, with sellers seeking hundreds of dollars for the service at KFC Yum Center.
One seller was offering five tickets on the site and included a photo of them as proof. “Ali tickets for trade of things valuble. What you got,” reads the post.
Within the first hour of its posting Wednesday, an eBay post selling four tickets at $50 each had been viewed more than 100 times.
However, an 11:15 a.m. ET post on Craigslist called out those selling tickets to the memorial service. “This is beyond wrong,” the post read. “Don’t let these people make a mockery of this man’s death.”
Many of the Craigslist posts from Wednesday morning were flagged and removed from the site by noon.
KFC Yum Center general manager Dennis Petrullo said selling the tickets was illegal.
“The value on the ticket was zero,” he said. “So if you tried to sell it for anything over zero, it would be considered scalping.”
Within an hour Wednesday morning, about 10,000 free tickets were given to those waiting in a line that snaked around three corners of the block outside the arena.
On eBay, a ticket to Thursday’s Jenazah prayer service was going for $25, though as of Wednesday morning tickets were still available for free at the Freedom Hall box office.