Fans Rally, and Officials Brace to Honor Jackson

Visitors lined up at the Staples Center on Friday to sign a poster for Michael Jackson. A memorial will be held there on Tuesday.

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By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES — Fans made a mad dash on the Internet on Friday for tickets to a Tuesday memorial service here for Michael Jackson, stirring worries among city officials over the expected throng and the city’s resources to police it.

After days of talks with the authorities, Mr. Jackson’s family and business representatives announced a memorial at the downtown Staples Center arena but imposed what they promoted as a stringent lottery for fans to get the 17,500 free tickets reserved for them in the arena and an adjacent theater.

As fans raced to sign up, the Web site the Staples Center set up for the lottery failed several times in the first hours after the announcement. By late afternoon, some 500,000 people had registered for tickets, the only way to get them, with winners to be notified on Sunday.

“You might want to consider watching this from the comfort of your own home,” said Jan Perry, a city councilwoman who is serving as acting mayor while Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa is away on vacation through next week.

But despite the pleadings of the organizers and city officials, some fans without tickets seemed intent on going.

“I’m going to come anyway,” said George Badilla, 28, who flew in from Guadalajara, Mexico, this week to visit sites associated with Mr. Jackson, 50, who died June 25 of undetermined causes.

Mr. Badilla, like several dozens fans, had rushed to the Staples Center on Friday believing tickets would be available there and now, uncertain if he would get a ticket online, thought about how close he could get to the arena.

Los Angeles police officials, bracing for tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, have not given an estimate of what it may cost to control the event, whose lineup and other details have not been announced. Plans for Mr. Jackson’s burial, expected to be private, have not been disclosed, and it was unclear if the police would help secure it as well.

The city is struggling to close a recession-fueled $530 million deficit in its operating budget. Ms. Perry said the city considered the memorial an “extraordinary event” and would tap into a fund set aside for such occurrences.

But Ms. Perry promptly went on local and national television to urge private donors to help; private donors, the Los Angeles Lakers and AEG Live, the company that owns the arena, covered the nearly $1 million in city costs for a parade honoring the team’s championship last month.

“Any company, entity, individual who would have such great love, the city would welcome the support,” she said in an interview, adding that so far no one had come forward.

Councilman Dennis P. Zine said that next week the City Council would discuss asking AEG, which had promoted a series of concerts Mr. Jackson planned to give this summer, to reimburse the city’s costs.

The police and organizers have taken steps to limit the crowds, aside from the lottery. The memorial will not be shown on the giant video screens in the Staples Center plaza, and arrangements have been made for a worldwide TV broadcast and live feed on the Internet.

The Staples Center has a capacity of nearly 20,000 for sporting events. The organizers said 11,000 fans would be admitted to the arena, with the remainder reserved for Mr. Jackson’s family, friends, guests and the news media. At the Nokia theater next door, 6,500 fans will be let in.

AEG restricted the lottery to United States residents, out of unspecified legal concerns.

Although tickets are free, AEG officials have not said whether there are plans to distribute recordings of the event.

AEG had invested $25 million to $30 million in Mr. Jackson’s planned concerts and could be responsible for $85 million in ticket refunds. Company officials have said they expected many fans would keep their tickets as souvenirs and suggested films or recordings of Mr. Jackson’s rehearsals might also soften the financial blow.

It may recoup losses through insurance if Mr. Jackson’s death is ruled accidental. Investigators have said he was taking prescription medicine, and Mr. Jackson had admitted to addiction to painkillers and other drugs in the past, but it was unclear whether drugs played a role in his death.

The California attorney general, Jerry Brown, said Friday that his office, which maintains a database of prescriptions filled in the state, was assisting the Los Angeles police in tracking down Mr. Jackson’s medicines and the doctors who might have prescribed them.

Citing an unnamed law enforcement source, The Associated Press reported that propofol, a powerful anesthetic used most often in surgery, was found in Mr. Jackson’s rented home in Los Angeles. A police spokesman declined to comment on the case.

A spokeswoman for Dr. Conrad Murray, Mr. Jackson’s physician, said she would not comment on “rumor or innuendo,” though his representatives have denied the doctor gave Mr. Jackson painkillers or other medicine that might explain his death.

Rebecca Cathcart and Ana Facio Contreras contributed reporting.