The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, England and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Those shows were attended by about 72, 000 people and 99, 000 people, respectively. On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative took place in other countries, such as Australia and Germany. It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time: an estimated 2 billion viewers, across 60 countries, watched the live broadcast. (source of those numbers is Wikipedia)
The effort, a follow up to Geldof’s artist collective single, Do They Know It’s Christmas, is said to have raised somewhere around £40-50 million (there has been some interesting controversy over exactly where that money wound up being spent).
Tears for Fears were supposed to show up but didn’t. Bruce Springsteen also didn’t show and later said he had no idea how big it was going to be and that boy oh boy did he regret it. And Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, wrote a song especially for the occasion but was bumped from the bill when Elton John’s set ran overtime.
Source: Inmusic