Today's Wall Street Journal has a rather eye-opening article about how Irving Azoff tried doing an unholy (for fans) deal with ticket scalpers to drive up ticket prices: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.After months of talks, the initiative against Live Nation -- which back then was in effect positioning itself as a competitor of both Ticketmaster and the brokers -- fell apart amid mutual distrust, according to people familiar with the matter. Neither side was confident it would get accurate accounting from the other. Nonetheless, the plan sheds light on the motives behind the current merger, whose antitrust implications are currently under review by the Justice Department.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."Ticketmaster continually explores new and viable revenue streams in both the primary and secondary marketplace on behalf of our clients and live event rightsholders," a Ticketmaster spokesman said. He cited numerous ways the company has sought "to maximize sales and capture the fair market ticket value for promoters, venues, teams and artists."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."Scalpers, who prefer to be called brokers, are worried that the merger could run them out of business. "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."The attempt to create Project Showtime got started with a meeting at Ticketmaster's West Hollywood, Calif., headquarters in the summer of 2007. It was led by Mr. Azoff, who opened with a joke. "I always knew we'd end up in a room together," he told the assembled brokers, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. "I just thought it would be a courtroom."Present at the meeting, according to these people, were senior executives of AEG Live, Ticketmaster and Cablevision Systems Corp.'s MSG Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. Spokesmen for AEG and MSG Entertainment declined to comment.The brokers at the meeting were the owners of Boston-based Ace Ticket; Los Angeles's Barry's Tickets Service; Fort Lauderdale's Total Tickets; Chicago's Gold Coast Tickets; New York City's Elite Ticket Service; and Alliance Tickets, which operates in Denver, Las Vegas and Seattle.Promoters and others in the mainstream concert business have long looked with envy at the steep markups scalpers charge for hot concerts. The Internet has made such resales easier and even more lucrative, allowing brokers to buy tickets for events in distant cities and list them on Web sites like eBay Inc.'s StubHub.com. But brokers can also be left holding the bag when they bet big on a show that flops or an outdoor event that is rained out.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. (Ticketmaster was spun off last year by IAC and subsequently acquired a majority stake in Mr. Azoff's Front Line Management, installing him as CEO of the combined entity. A spokeswoman for IAC declined to comment.)At a dinner later, Timothy B. Schmit, a member of the Eagles, one of Mr. Azoff's longtime management clients, stopped by.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.But Ticketmaster executives were ultimately wary of going into business with the leaders of an industry they had long opposed.The company briefly explored another avenue into the secondary market, paying $265 million last year for a ticket-resale site called TicketsNow.Ticketmaster is now trying to sell that Web site, and people familiar with the situation say the company ultimately decided the merger would allow it to achieve many of the same goals as buying the ticket brokers.Just last week, Ticketmaster also opened another front in its battle against scalpers, initiating a new technology that blocks any computer that attempts to access the company's Web site 1,000 times or more in a day, a frequency achieved by some professional scalpers using special computer software. The move is likely to further heighten tensions with brokers.A spokesman for Ticketmaster said, "We regularly take measures to protect the security of our Web site and system to enforce our terms of use."They don't call him the Poison Dwarf for nothing, kids