PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP):

TICKETS BOUGHT for next year's Cricket World Cup on Internet auction sites or from other third-party outlets will not be honoured, organisers said on Thursday.

Only tickets sold through authorised travel agents and the International Cricket Council's public ticketing programme will be valid for entry at the tournament, which is being held for the first time in the Caribbean, World Cup Commercial Manager Stephen Price said from Jamaica.

"We're telling people before they make a bid on eBay that those tickets won't be valid," he said referring to a popular Internet auction site. "We're trying to protect people from price gouging."

Price said World Cup officials are working with eBay and Internet monitoring services to identify who is selling tickets.

Calls made to San Jose, California-based eBay were not immediately returned.

Tickets posted on Thursday on eBay were drawing bids of more than twice their face value. A package of four tickets for matches in Barbados, with a face value of US$900 (€710), had attracted bids higher than US$1,900 (€1,500) with a day left in the auction.

Price said organisers started noticing unauthorised ticket sales on eBay and sites, such as worldticketshop.com, in late August. He said the number of tickets being offered online were in the hundreds.

About 800,000 tickets are on sale for the tournament. Organisers will begin mailing tickets in January.

"People are selling tickets they haven't even received yet," he said.