Van Halen Made Extra $1 Million by Working With Scalpers

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on a ticket scam spearheaded by Ticketmaster head Irving Azoff. Seems that the best 500 tickets for 20 of Van Halen's shows on the reunion tour were removed from the Ticketbastard system and were given to scalpers, who would be allowed to keep 30 percent of the money they made by scalping the tickets. The remaining 70 percent would go to Ticketmaster, the band and others.

It was part of a clandestine Ticketmaster program called "Project Showtime" that was designed to reap some of the benefits from ticket scalping. Makes me feel a whooooole lot better about the Ticketmaster/LiveNation monopoly.

...not.

According to the article, the program "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." Yeah no shit. That is like a Walmart letting drug dealers peddle their pharmaceuticals and then wondering why the checks aren't coming in on a regular basis.

Read more here.