Van Halen

WSJ: Ticketmaster, Scalpers Explored Deal to Sink Live Nation

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 28, 2009 - 9:41am.
New York - Current Ticketmaster (NASD: TKTM) CEO Irving Azoff met with a group of leading ticket brokers in 2007 in a bid to try to corner the market for secondary tickets, just as rival Live Nation (NYSE: LYV) announced plans to develop its own ticketing service independent of Ticketmaster, The Wall Street Journal reported. Azoff was still heading his Front Line Entertainment management firm -- in which Ticketmaster had a stake -- when he met with six large ticket brokers, and an offer was made for Ticketmaster to acquire them for as much as $25 million each.

Report: Activision to Feature Van Halen in Next "Guitar Hero"

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 28, 2009 - 12:31pm.
Los Angeles - The next band to receive its own branded edition of Activision's (NASD: ATVI) "Guitar Hero" game will be Van Halen, Kotaku reports, citing a pre-order listing for the title on retailer GameStop's website. According to the ad, the game is slated for release on July 28 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 2. Activision has already released special editions of the game featuring Aerosmith and Metallica.

AT&T Gets Exclusive Ringtones From Dave Matthews, Van Halen

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 12, 2007 - 12:44pm.

Los Angeles - AT&T (NYSE: T) has recently scored exclusive ringtone deals with former ringtone holdouts the Dave Matthews Band and Van Halen, Billboard reports. Van Halen, which is on a reunion tour, gave AT&T a limited exclusive on ringtones for its popular songs, which will eventually be available across all networks. AT&T is exclusively offering ringtones from live Dave Matthews performances, but will later add studio tracks as well. As to why Matthews finally decided to offer ringtones, AT&T director of music and personalization products Mark Nagel told Billboard, "It was a case where he was being searched for literally thousands of times a month with no content to give. We took those figures to the label and the band's management and let them know that people are asking for this."