Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s farewell: how much was really collected

Immediately after”Back to the beginning” (here is our story), the event of last July 5th which marked the farewell to the scenes of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, who then passed away on July 22nd, Tom Morello, involved in the live marathon as music curator, had shared the estimates of the funds raised. In an interview given to “Pollstar” on July 17th – but made public only a month later -, Sharon Osbourne she then expressed herself against the media for i inflated numbers and untrue reports about the event. Returning to the matter now, Ozzy’s former manager and wife revealed how much “Back to the beginning” actually raised for charity.

In the days following the concert, Morello of Rage Against The Machine announced on Instagram that they had been collected “more than 190 million dollars“, to be shared equally between Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice. However, a spokesperson for Live Nation also told NME at the time that the figures reported “do not reflect reality and are false”. After distancing herself further from those figures, Sharon decided to clarify. In the first episode of the podcast “The Osbournes”, which the family recorded after the disappearance of the “Prince of Darkness”, Sharon Osbourne clarified the amount raised and said:

“The media was reporting it was up to $190 million. If only one concert could raise that much! That’s like saying any artist can do one big show, film it, and retire on that alone. No, we’re not even close, and I wish it had been that way, but we live in reality, in the real world.”

When her son Jack Osbourne asked her how much money the event had actually generated, she said it was about 11 million dollars.