CPI will continue to operate as a seperate unit and will work in conjunction with Live Nation's existing global touring division. It will also work on Live Nation's initiatives to secure rights to content beyond the live show, including recordings, films and dvds.

Live Nation (NYSE: LYV) is a former subisdary of Clear Channel Communications Inc. (NYSE: CCU). The company owns or operates nearly 120 venues in North and South America and Europe. It also offers sports marketing talent representation through its SFX Sports Group.

CPI will continue to operate as a seperate unit and will work in conjunction with Live Nation's existing global touring division. It will also work on Live Nation's initiatives to secure rights to content beyond the live show, including recordings, films and dvds.

Live Nation (NYSE: LYV) is a former subisdary of Clear Channel Communications Inc. (NYSE: CCU). The company owns or operates nearly 120 venues in North and South America and Europe. It also offers sports marketing talent representation through its SFX Sports Group. Source>>>

The Baltimore Ravens have signed a corporate sponsorship deal with TicketsNow, a Chicago online ticket brokerage.

TicketsNow will serve as the Ravens' exclusive online secondary ticket marketplace, and the team will promote the company in a variety of Web, direct mail and broadcast advertising campaigns.

Dennis Mannion, the Ravens' senior vice president for business ventures, said the union with TicketsNow "will provide the Ravens and our fans with the most comprehensive and secure place for secondary market tickets for Ravens' games and other events."

Terms of the multi-year sponsorship deal weren't disclosed.

This is TicketNow's first sponsorship deal with an NFL team, company Vice President Jeff Berman said.

The company says more than 90 percent of all professional ticket agencies that list, buy and sell secondary event tickets over the Web use TicketsNow software. Secondary tickets are seats purchased from a source other than the team or venue.

The result is a huge tickets database, and rapid sales growth. TicketsNow said Tuesday it had landed $8 million in venture capital to build its brand. Source>>>

If you're a Miami Heat season-ticket holder, you could be sitting on a fortune.

Courtside seats are going for as much as $8,800 on the scalpers' market for Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals Friday -- a game that will be played only if the Heat loses in Detroit tonight. If the Heat makes it to the championship round, they could be worth even more.

And guess who wants to help you scalp such pricey tickets? The Florida Legislature.

After six decades, the state is set to overturn a law that forbids the reselling of tickets for more than $1 above face value. A bill that passed the House and Senate in the recent session calls for nothing short of legalized scalping.

If signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, it will impose no penalties for selling a ticket at any price, provided the seller offers certain protections, including a refund if the event is canceled.

Given what some tickets are worth, there's much at stake. But it's unclear if the average buyer who purchases scalped tickets will benefit from the deal.

Currently, Florida is one of about a dozen states with an anti-scalping law. But the law is not particularly enforced -- just look at the scene outside any concert or sporting event, or check online. And for years, ticket brokers have found a way around the law by packaging tickets with travel, so buyers are "paying" for, say, a pricey limo ride to the event.

Advocates argue that by legitimizing scalping, the bill will create a healthy wave of competition because new resellers, no longer considered petty criminals, will enter the market. In turn, advocates say, that will result in lower prices.

"The bottom line is that this bill is going to benefit consumers," said Nick Iarossi, a Tallahassee lobbyist who represented the online fan-to-fan ticket marketplace StubHub in pushing for the new law.

But some of the biggest resellers say just the opposite. The National Association of Ticket Brokers argues that the bill will stifle competition because of a provision that restricts how many tickets can be purchased per event. If a popular event has a limit -- in the case of Madonna's July shows in Miami, it's six tickets -- a broker must respect it.

That means brokers theoretically can't employ such bulk-buying methods as using aliases or hiring others to make purchases on their behalf without facing a criminal penalty. Some promoters believe the methods are part of what drives the scalping industry, estimated at $10 billion to $25 billion a year.

While brokers aren't admitting to such tricks of the trade, they are saying that with the provision, their business is bound to suffer. And the consumer will pay for it because there will probably be fewer brokers around, resulting in a tighter market and escalating prices, they contend.

The bill's provision "is restricting free trade," said Todd Robin, a South Florida broker who runs Todd's Tickets at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton.

Florida isn't the only state taking a close look at ticket reselling. Legislation is pending in at least four other states -- California, Louisiana, South Carolina and Massachusetts.

The current push is not by accident. Reselling has taken off since the advent of the Internet, which transformed what was a small-time business to a thriving national industry. Major players include StubHub, the auction site eBay and the ticket industry's most dominant force, Ticketmaster, which has helped create a safe, legitimate resale market for fans in states where it is legal. More>>>

TicketsNow, the Crystal Lake online reseller of tickets to major sporting events, concerts and theater, has had its ticket punched with an $8 million infusion from Chicago area and Silicon Valley venture capitalists -- and there's more to come soon.

The funding is the first the company received from outside investors. But TicketsNow Chief Executive Mike Domek, said Friday he expects another $16 million to $32 million in backing later this year. "We're getting a lot of interest from Silicon Valley [VCs]," he said.

The first round came from Portage Venture Partners in Northfield; high-profile Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, Calif.; DFJ Portage Venture Partners, a joint venture of the two firms, and J.B. Pritzker's New World Ventures in Evanston.

Domek said, "We wanted to play in front of the home team."

He said Portage's affiliation with Silicon Valley-based Draper Fisher was attractive and a way to test the waters in Silicon Valley. Draper Fisher had such major hits as Baidu, the Chinese search engine, and Skype, the Internet phone service purchased by eBay.

Portage VC Matthew McCall said, "We're very excited about TicketsNow. They started with a $100 investment. Last year, they sold $140 million worth of tickets, and this year they expect to sell $220 million. They've been growing 70 [percent] to 130 percent over each of the past seven years. That unbelievable growth was a wake-up call for us."

He said TicketsNow could be in line for an initial public offering within the next 18 months. More>>>

Domek said TicketsNow will use the funding to continue building its "world-class management team" and upgrading its Web site, which, starting in July, will link sales of tickets with reservations for limousines and restaurants.

"We were the first to sell tickets from the secondary market online. What makes us different is we're handling transactions in the secondary ticket market in a secure fashion involving licensed ticket brokers, rather than fan-to-fan sales. We have professionals handling order fulfillment, rather than individuals," he said.

The tickets come from brokers, who obtain them from venues and from season ticketholders.

EBay and Yahoo dropped an announcement bomb early this morning saying that the two Internet giants have agreed to combine their efforts on a number of projects. By 2007, expect an increase in eBay search results on Yahoo!, an increase of contextual text and graphical ads on eBay, PayPal to power Yahoo! Wallet, a co-branded eBay Toolbar, and click-to-call advertising using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice and Skype.

The partnership, which only affects U.S. clients, is thought to be an affront toward Yahoo!'s chief rival in Google, who until recently wasn't considered a threat to eBay. With the arrival of Google Base and a rumored online payment system in the works, eBay has now responded with precision force through its Yahoo! alliance.

The deal will also have a large impact on Yahoo!'s bottom line as the exclusive implementation of PayPal as its third-party payment provider will likely lower the search company's costs in payment processing.

More important to the advertiser and online sellers is the robust mesh of options now available to them through pay-per-call, the increased seller presence though auction listings in organic Yahoo! search results, and delivery of contextual ads on eBay listings.

" This will include testing some sponsored search ads for complementary products and services," said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America. "For example, a buyer searching for a hair dryer might be presented with sponsored search ads for related items like shampoo or hair brushes. To be clear, we will not place ads on view item pages."

Admitting that eBay's advertising infrastructure "is not as robust as it could be," Cobb said the online auctioneer would be working with Yahoo! to improve its keyword ad program. Part of this involves Yahoo! accepting more keyword purchases from eBay.com to boost eBay's inclusion in sponsored search results.

"These efforts will mean that Yahoo!'s millions of users will have more access to eBay listings, and eBay.com sellers should benefit from increased traffic to the site," said Cobb.

This summer the duo will be testing ad placements at the bottom of empty search results pages that return no matches for queried items. If, for example, a buyer is looking for a particular vintage G.I. Joe action figure, but no listings for the doll are found, ads will appear related to the query instead.

The inclusion of Skype with Yahoo! Messenger creates another targeted opportunity for advertisers as the combination will be a catalyst for pay-per-call advertising where links included in ads allow the searcher to call a merchant directly. All changes will be gradually implemented for the rest of 2006, to be fully realized in 2007.

"Our consumers will benefit from the combination of Yahoo! and eBay's leading technology and services, providing them with one of the best online experiences," said Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel.

News of the massive collaboration effort sent early morning trading into an upswing for the two companies. At 10:30 this morning, Yahoo! shares were up nearly three percent while eBay jumped seven percent. At the same time, Google dropped by 1.27 percent.

Three years after Ticketmaster introduced ticketFast, its online print-at-home ticketing service, consumers have so embraced it that the company now sells a half-million home-printed tickets for sporting and entertainment events each month in North America. Where ticketFast is available, 30 percent of tickets sold are now printed at home, said the company, which is by far the nation's largest ticket agency.

But consumers -- many of whom have complained for years about climbing ticket prices and Ticketmaster service charges -- may be less eager for the next phase of Ticketmaster's Internet evolution.

Late this year the company plans to begin auctioning the best seats to concerts through ticketmaster.com.

With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a market will bear.

"The tickets are worth what they're worth," said John Pleasants, Ticketmaster's president and chief executive. "If somebody wants to charge $50 for a ticket, but it's actually worth $1,000 on eBay, the ticket's worth $1,000. I think more and more, our clients -- the promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves -- are saying to themselves, `Maybe that money should be coming to me instead of Bob the Broker.' "

EBay has long been a busy marketplace for tickets auctioned by brokers and others. Late last week, for example, it had more than 22,000 listings for ticket sales.

Venue operators, promoters and performers will decide whether to participate in the Ticketmaster auctions, Mr. Pleasants said. In June, the company tested the system for the Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko boxing match at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The minimum bid for the package -- two ringside seats, a boxing glove autographed by Mr. Lewis and access to workouts, among other features -- was $3,000, and the top payer spent about $7,000, a Staples Center spokesman, Michael Roth, said.

Once the auction service goes live, Ticketmaster will receive flat fees or a percentage of the winning bids, to be decided with the operators of each event, said Sean Moriarty, Ticketmaster's executive vice president for products, technology and operations.

Along with home printing, auctions are central to "a new age of the ticket," Mr. Pleasants said. In the second quarter of this year, tickets sold online, with or without home printing, represented 51 percent of Ticketmaster's ticket sales. The rest were sold by phone or at walk-up locations. More>>>