More than 1.5 million Michael Jackson fans sent websites into meltdown today as they scrambled to buy tickets for his London gigs.

Ecstatic: Michael Jackson

People from across the world, including Congo, Paraguay and Korea, caused two sites offering pre-sale tickets to The O2 arena concerts in July to crash within minutes of going online.

The 50-year-old king of pop's shows are being promoted as his last ever gigs in London. And when The O2 released 8,240 tickets for sale at 7am its website was unable to cope with demand, directing customers to the Ticketmaster website, which also went down.

Hundreds of fans desperate to buy tickets were left frustrated. One said: “To say we're annoyed is an understatement.”

The O2 this morning apologised to customers, saying unprecedented demand had resulted in “intermittent service” and encouraged them to “keep trying”.

Jackson is said to be “ecstatic” at the way the shows are being received, while Randy Phillips, president of promoters AEG Live said: “These shows will go down in history.”

The concerts will take place from 8 July. Tickets go on general sale on Friday.

Tina Turner has postponed her O2 concert tomorrow night because of flu. The 69-year-old's gig will now be on 3 May.