Van Halen Accused of Ticketmaster Scalping Scheme
Posted on Sep 1st 2009 10:00AM by John D. Luerssen

Van Halen allegedly worked with scalpers during its fall 2007 tour in order to pull down an extra $1 million, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal. The financial paper says the band was involved in farming out of up to 500 of the best seats from about 20 of its concerts with original frontman David Lee Roth to secondary ticket brokers.

In a move that was part of a Ticketmaster initiative named "Project Showtime," the desirable tickets were pulled from the company's system and passed directly to private sellers. These secondary ticketing firms reportedly kept 30 percent of the inflated sale price for themselves and pushed the remaining 70 percent back to Ticketmaster, the band and its handlers.

According to reporter Ethan Smith, the move by Ticketmaster was in effort designed to capture a piece of the sky-high prices charged by scalpers, which can exceed a ticket's face value by hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.

Van Halen's manager Irving Azoff -- who was the CEO of Front Line Management, which Ticketmaster then co-owned, and who now serves as Ticketmaster's chief executive -- is said to have spearheaded the scheme. "Project Showtime" fell apart because of distrust between participants, but not before the secondary ticket brokers were given tickets to scalp for Van Halen with Azoff's blessing.

Azoff has since condemned ticket scalping in the press and distanced himself in the practice after the subsequent merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which occurred earlier this year.

http://www.spinner.com/2009/09/01/van-h ... -scheme%2F

No one seems to care for van halen.

I don't think anyone's surprised. Dan Snyder, the Redskins owner, was just accused by the Washington Post of doing this, and he was also accused of suing season ticket holders who'd defaulted on their contracts because of the bad economy.

But look at the Van Halen situation. Albums don't sell, and rockstars want to maintain their lifestyles, so why wouldn't they hike up ticket prices to pocket extra dough? Its unfortunate, but its the effect of rampant downloading.

well, it's at least fraud.

This practice is not uncommon.

Van Halen makes a shitload of money from touring and any revenue one might argue was lost from downloading is a drop in the bucket by comparison. Last year they grossed 1.25 mil per fucking show.

if people are willing to pay then what's the harm?

Really?? A shitload of fans filled up a bunch of arenas not much more than a year ago.

The harm that I see is that the REAL fans trying thier hardest to get primo seats on ticket sales day get shafted into worse seats. I am in the photo pit for a lot of shows and I can not tell you how many times I have seen some bored stiff in a suit in the front row because he has the cash to pay absurd prices while all the crazy fans singing a long are all behind them.... Then about 50% of the time the stiff in a suit and his lady of the night leave early.

Or sometimes the REAL fans are forced to buy the aftermarket tickets if it sells out.

so they should be demonized for being capitalists?

I did not say anything about demonizing. You are getting carried away.

HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES? I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line you do not, uh...

well played

To be honest, this sounds like something Dave and Eddie would get involved in.
Anbody remember the US festival?
...and also Dave's been out of the BIG money for quite a while, it's almost hard to imagine him saying no to something like this

yeah, that was good. back to the original point, this would seem to me to be fraud. somehow.

how is it fraud? they sold the tickets to a re-seller. they sold the tickets to fans. fans had access to any seat they wanted, they just had to pay more for the 500 best ones. what fraud was committed?

because that wasn't an open deal like Madonna or others like her did. (not that I approve of that either..any band that does it, I tell them to go themselves and they won't get ANY of my money.)
They didn't say: the 500 best seats, you have to pay $$$ more to get through auction and we're getting a cut of that.
they did it sneakily behind the fans back who thought they had a shot at the best seats at normal price.