Some people looking to cash in on the death of Joe Paterno are out of luck, as eBay has pulled multiple listings offering tickets to the Penn State coach’s public memorial service.
On Thursday, Penn State plans to hold a service entitled “A Memorial For Joe” inside the 16,000-seat Bryce Jordan Center. It’ll be streamed online and broadcast on cable, but of course some Penn State fans really want to attend. So much so, that tickets to the event “sold out” in just seven minutes after becoming available, according to the AP.
The tickets were actually free, but on a first come, first serve basis. Over 10,000 tickets were up for grabs, and according to Penn State’s athletic site, ticket orders were limited to two per person. Apparently, not everyone that snatched up tickets actually wanted to attend the event – some had different motives.
Looking to bank on the legendary sports figure’s popularity (and possibly his recent controversy) some ticket-holders put theirs up on eBay. And before eBay pulled the listings, one of them had reached nearly $100K from about 73 bids.
There’s some chatter that Penn State faithfuls drove up the price in order to prevent the scalper the satisfaction of making a buck off Joe Paterno’s death, but whatever the case, eBay did eventually pull the listings as they violate this particular policy:
Some news outlets struggled with accurately reporting Joe Paterno’s death last weekend. It appears some people, in this case, struggled with acceptable social behavior. But enough about Joe Paterno.
