There’s still bad blood between industry giants Barry Diller and Irving Azoff, 15 years after Azoff, 78, pushed Diller, 84, out of Live Nation.
In a recent interview, Diller referred to the famed Eagles manager as an “infidel” and “dread Irving Azoff,” alleging Azoff was the Judas of the Live Nation board.
A federal jury found this month that Live Nation and Ticketmaster overcharged ticket buyers and operated as a monopoly. Diller — who helped orchestrate the merger in 2010 — told podcaster Graham Bensinger: “Merging them was brilliant… whatever, it’s true it was brilliant. Putting those two together was absolutely right. Here’s the company that dominated ticketing and here’s the company that dominated producing and distributing live events. Perfect merger.”
Irving Azoff attends Barry Gibb Press Conference on August 10, 1983 at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images But Diller — the onetime Ticketmaster boss turned short-lived Live Nation chairman — recalled of the deal, “My stupidity or my naiveté was that when I did that… I said, ‘Let’s have a board of directors, six from your company and six from my company. And we’ll have no rules other than that,’ thinking that the balance would be an honorable balance. What I did not know was is one of my six directors was an infidel who had made a deal with their six directors… the dread Irving Azoff… to actually vote with them. And so at the first board meeting I was outvoted. And the next day I sold my stock.”
When we reached out to Azoff for comment, his rep fired back, “Barry is obviously confused and doesn’t have the facts right. Mr. Azoff will be setting the record perfectly straight in an interview for Ari Emanuel‘s upcoming book.”
(Diller’s memoir, “Who Knew,” was published last year.)
Back in 2010, the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger famously brought together Hollywood power brokers Diller and Azoff — but Azoff reportedly teamed with a fellow board member — Liberty Media “Cable Cowboy” and Diller foe, John Malone — to push Diller out. Music industry gadfly Bob Lefsetz said of Diller at the time: “Irving and Malone took him out the back and shot him. He’s done.”
Malone’s relationship with Diller had already soured after the execs sued each other in a battle over another company, IAC. The two had known each other since the ’70s when Diller ran Paramount and Malone rose to be one of cable’s biggest operators. Malone later put Diller in charge of HSN in the ’90s. Under Diller, HSN became IAC, which bought Ticketmaster from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, but the Malone-Diller rift followed as Diller tried to spin off his biz.
Years ago, Azoff had called reports of the Live Nation strife “ridiculous” while Diller said publicly that he only planned to stay on as Live Nation chair through its transition integrating Ticketmaster.
