Police are preparing to fend off vast crowds at tomorrow’s Michael Jackson memorial after 1.6 million fans applied for just 17,500 tickets to commemorate the King of Pop.

Organisers of the memorial service began last night to notify lucky winners of the online lottery.

“He is just legendary. Seeing the videos over these last few days, you just remember how great he is,” said Joyce Hobbs, a human resources manager, paying tribute yesterday outside the Los Angeles Staples Centre, where the memorial is to be held.

Los Angeles police said that the family would first hold a private funeral at the Forest Lawn cemetery in the Hollywood Hills — the resting place of the actors Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis and the singers Sammy Davis Jr and Nat King Cole. Jackson’s body is reportedly already held there, but police did not release details.

Only 11,000 tickets are available for fans to attend the 90-minute memorial service at the Staples Centre, with another 6,500 being accommodated at a live telecast of the event in an overflow section across the street. The memorial will also be broadcast live to an estimated 750 million television viewers worldwide.

Police expect as many as 700,000 people to try to reach the arena, even though a 12-block area will be sealed off and officials have warned fans without tickets to stay away.

Details of the service remain sketchy but the producer said that it would not have “all bells and whistles” and that a later tribute concert was possible. “We want to keep it low-key,” Ken Ehrlich, producer of the Grammy Awards, told the New York Daily News. “People who are watching it can expect to see people who have played a role in his life, who will be reminiscing about him and speaking to the impact he’s made.”

Jackson, who died of a heart attack on June 25, aged 50, is expected to be buried in a $25,000 (£15,000) goldplated coffin similar to that used to inter the soul singer James Brown. His burial attire is being designed by the Los Angeles-based duo Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush, who had been working on the costumes for the singer’s This Is It tour in London.

As the coroner awaits the results of toxicology tests, police are reportedly investigating at least five doctors after numerous bottles of the powerful sedative propofol were found in Jackson’s Holmby Hills mansion. Propofol, marketed as Diprivan, is used as a general anaesthetic and sedative and is seldom seen outside a hospital. Cherilyn Lee, a former nurse, said that Jackson had complained of insomnia and asked her to get him the drug this year. She had told him: “This medication is not safe.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that at least five doctors prescribed drugs to Jackson. Some of the drugs seized from his home were prescribed under pseudonyms; others had no labels at all. Investigators are expected to examine whether the doctors had the required face-to-face relationship to prescribe drugs for Jackson.

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