Jackson's Death Means Multimillion-Dollar Woes for Concert Promoter

The refunding of nearly 750,000 tickets to Michael Jackson's 50-show London concert run is going to be an extremely complex and probably messy process.But that's only the beginning of the headaches for promoter AEG Live, which stands to lose millions of dollars because of the pop icon's death and will need to scramble to find another act to fill its O2 Arena in London.

The promoter and the primary and secondary ticket vendors are expected to refund money to all fans who purchased tickets for the show, making it hard, depending on AEG Live's insurance policy, for the company to recoup the estimated $40 million it spent to book Jackson and promote the event.

"It's a complex and messy situation, and it has to be resolved quickly, as I understand it, by U.K. law," Ray Waddell, senior editor of touring for Billboard, told ABCNews.com this morning. "It would be bad enough if it were just straight up ticket sales through Ticketmaster, but a significant portion of these sales were through the 'secondary' or resale market as producer/promoter AEG Live partnered with UK reseller Viagogo on these dates." link....