Big Ticket Seller Tried Deal With Scalpers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125141597320965247.html

Before Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc., the nation's leading ticket seller, and Live Nation Inc. decided to merge, Ticketmaster pursued a strategy to thwart the concert promoter's plan to enter the ticket-selling business, according to several people familiar with the matter. Spearheaded by Irving Azoff, Ticketmaster's current chief executive, the effort sought to combine several of the nation's biggest ticket scalpers with Ticketmaster and other major concert-industry players. At the time, Mr. Azoff was the CEO of Front Line Management, which handles dozens of top musical acts and was partly owned by Ticketmaster. The goal of the initiative, codenamed "Project Showtime," was 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. They could then compete against Live Nation's nascent ticketing business by offering to share the scalpers' revenue with entertainers and venues. Others involved in the talks included AEG Live, the largest concert promoter after Live Nation, and MSG Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden. The proposed merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster would join the two former rivals and also create a more efficient way to realize many of the financial benefits Ticketmaster would have received if it had teamed up with the brokers. A combined company could set prices that are closer to what the market will bear, according to people familiar with the company's strategy, allowing it to snag much of the money that currently flows to scalpers. The plan sheds light on the motives behind the current merger, whose antitrust implications are currently under review by the Justice Department.Testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition earlier this year, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino cited all the money flowing to the burgeoning scalping industry as a key rationale for the merger. "[Scalping] is about a billion-dollar business that we receive zero dollars from," Mr. Rapino complained. "We spend millions on real-estate and artist investments, and we realize zero of the scalping market."

How to beat scalpers and get awesome tickets cheap
FIRST you should:
1- live fairly close to the concert (within an hour, say)
2-Know where you will park near the concert.
3- Optionally: have a laptop and a way to print things when not at home
4-Have a backup plan to do something fun in case you dont get the tickets in time.
Plus, TicketsNow will refund 100% if they dont get you the tickets.
NEXT:
Use the direct brokerage links below or use tickets.gruvr.com to monitor the ticket marketplace. As the day of the concert approaches, you will see prices falling as sellers (and especially scalpers) start to panic about unsold tickets they are holding. The more unsold tickets are still listed, the lower the prices go. Caveat: if the tickets are almost gone in the days before the show, the prices are less likely to drop.

Scalpers,  "If this merger were to go through, the secondary market for concert tickets as we know it would cease to exist," predicts Paul McCann, a ticket broker near Baltimore who was not involved in the Project Showtime talks. "They would replace it with something they create, and they will keep all the money the secondary market generates." Promoters and others in the mainstream concert business have long looked with envy at the steep markups scalpers charge for hot concerts.
Under the plan, the consortium led by Ticketmaster and its then-parent, IAC/InterActiveCorp., was to acquire the six regional ticket brokers for as much as $25 million apiece and give them seats on the new venture's board. There was even a test run in the fall of 2007, according to numerous people with knowledge of the matter. Up to 500 of the best seats to each of about 20 concerts by Van Halen, the veteran hard-rock band managed by Mr. Azoff, were pulled from the Ticketmaster system and passed directly to the brokers being considered for acquisition. The brokers kept 30% of the marked-up sale price for themselves, and the remaining 70% was divided among Ticketmaster, the band and its handlers. The band netted an extra $1 million, at least, from the arrangement, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesman said the band wasn't available for comment.