INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Tickets For Michelle Obama’s London Event Are Selling For 70,000 Pounds In The UK

By Naomi Kennedy
Published on: 02:38 PST, Nov 8, 2018

The love for former first lady Michelle Obama extends well passed the United States, so it’s no surprise that tickets for her highly anticipated event at London’s Royal Festival Hall sold out pretty quickly. Unfortunately, some of the tickets for the event got into the hands of third-party sellers, and are being sold online for as much as £70,000, or roughly $91,000, The Guardian reported.

Minutes after the phone lines opened for more than 50,000 “genuine fans” of the former President’s wife, Switzerland-based reseller Viagogo was already offering seats for more than 570 times their face value, which was set by the South Bank Centre at a price of anywhere between £30 and £125. As of this morning, the most expensive ticket found by The Guardian on the Viagogo website was for a box seat listed at the outrageously high price of £72,181.

A spokesperson for the venue said it had requested for the tickets to be removed from the site.

“We are aware that a small number of tickets to this event have appeared on third-party resale sites,” the spokesperson said. “We take secondary ticketing very seriously and aim to discourage this by stipulating that tickets should not be resold for profit or commercial gain.”

It appears that Viagogo, who typically takes a cut of 25 percent of the price, has complied with the South Bank Centre’s request–the page for the event on December 3 now only offers to notify those interested via email when tickets are available.

The 2,700-capacity venue will host Michelle and acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, where they will be discussing the former FLOTUS’s new memoir Becoming. which is expected to be released on November 13.

“Reflecting on her memoir, Michelle Obama invites the audience […] into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her–from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years an an executive, balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address,” the South Bank Centre wrote on it’s website describing the event.

According to The Guardian, buyers were asked to join a “waiting room” at 8 a.m. before being randomly assigned a place in a queue when tickets sales officially began at 10 a.m. By 10:30, the venue tweeted that tickets had sold out.

The BBC reported that according to Twitter, people began lining up at the venue as early as 4 a.m. to try and score a coveted ticket to see the first lady.

The venue noted to the BBC that due to “extreme demand for this event, unfortunately there will be people who are disappointed.

Tickets for the U.S. dates of the tour sold quickly as well, and Obama tweeted she was “truly humbled” by the response.

The event in London is in the middle of Michelle’s 13-date book tour, which will begin on November 13 in the hometown of the Obama’s, where Michelle will be in conversation with Oprah Winfrey.

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