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By Dave Michaels and Katherine Sayre

President Trump promised to crack down on bad behavior in the ticketing and concert industry to help bring down prices for American fans.

This past week, though, he pardoned a sports executive in one of his Justice Department's big battles against the industry, Tim Leiweke.

Trump decided on the pardon after Republican former Rep. Trey Gowdy raised the case with him following a round of golf, according to people familiar with the matter. Leiweke had faced charges of rigging the bid for a $375 million basketball arena that was later built for the University of Texas. He had pleaded not guilty.

The pardon wiped away a case that Trump's antitrust chief had said fleeced Texas taxpayers. It also revealed the risky strategy prosecutors chose to pursue in granting immunity to Leiweke's partners and focusing on Leiweke alone.

Leiweke was expected to be a witness in the government's big civil case designed to improve competition and pricing in concerts and sports, and his indictment was the only criminal case targeting how the live-events industry works.

The investigation had ensnared some of the most powerful names in entertainment and sports: Live Nation Entertainment; its former chairman, Irving Azoff, who is a music mogul and Democratic donor; and his business partner Leiweke, who turned a once-barren part of Los Angeles into a gleaming entertainment district now anchored by the Los Angeles Lakers. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones also made an appearance.

Prosecutors alleged that Leiweke promised business to a company co-founded by Jones to keep that firm from competing to develop the arena in Austin, Texas. Azoff, too, was an intermediary with the rival firm. The case didn't mention that Jones had any direct involvement.

Earlier this year, prosecutors decided to give Azoff and the company he founded with Leiweke, Oak View Group, immunity. In July, they charged the lone defendant — Leiweke.

"We were very clever at putting together a partnership that scared everyone else away," Leiweke wrote to his colleagues and investors about how Oak View won the bid to build the arena, according to an email cited in his indictment.

A Justice Department spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal last month that another senior Trump antitrust official, Omeed Assefi, had made the case against Leiweke "airtight" by negotiating the nonprosecution deals for the companies.

One of Leiweke's lawyers, Gowdy, used those very immunity deals to convince Trump otherwise, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In an interview, Gowdy said that after playing a round of golf at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 16, Trump asked Gowdy if there was anything he needed. Gowdy, a former prosecutor who had a 3.4 golf handicap in 2023, according to Golf Digest, brought up his client's case, first asking for help getting a meeting with one of the federal prosecutors handling it.

Leiweke had been treated unfairly, Gowdy told Trump in later conversations, pointing to the other immunity agreements. It was an argument he had earlier tried, unsuccessfully, with the Justice Department. The University of Texas didn't see itself as a victim, Gowdy added, pointing to how the arena opened in 2022 with private capital.

Over the next few weeks, Gowdy advocated for Leiweke to be granted his own nonprosecution deal. Trump instead issued a pardon.

"I am extremely grateful that the president allowed me to raise that issue with him, and he is the president, and whatever decision was made after that, he was elected to make, I was not," Gowdy said.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: "President Trump is the final decider on any pardon or commutation and is exercising his constitutional authority to issue them as he deems necessary."

During a phone call after the pardon, Leiweke thanked Trump for understanding. In an interview, Leiweke said he doesn't understand why the case was brought against him. He said he plans to move forward with a new company and buy a sports team.

"I'm going to do it again," he said. "I'm not dead yet."

Freed from the threat of prosecution on Wednesday, Leiweke declined to help the Justice Department for now. The day after he received a pardon, he avoided every question in a deposition in a broader civil case against Live Nation by invoking his right against self-incrimination, people familiar with the matter said. Leiweke plans to cooperate after a judge approves the dismissal of the criminal case against him, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The price of concert tickets in the U.S. has skyrocketed over the past decade, including in the secondary market, and the Justice Department is trying to use antitrust tools to bring them down.

Last year, it filed a 128-page lawsuit accusing the juggernaut that resulted from the 2010 merger between the ticketing giant Ticketmaster and the concert promoter Live Nation of using its power to unfairly squelch competition, retaliate against those in the industry that threaten its dominance, and drive up ticket prices. Live Nation has said that it doesn't have a monopoly and that artists and teams set ticket prices.

Leiweke, 68 years old, previously oversaw NBA teams including the Denver Nuggets and the Toronto Raptors. For years he ran Anschutz Entertainment Group, the entertainment conglomerate owned by the politically conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz.

In 2015, he founded Oak View with Azoff, the 77-year-old mogul who managed the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett.

Oak View acknowledged it owed its success to Live Nation, landing its first major contract to redevelop a Seattle arena because it could rely on Live Nation's heft in concert promotions. "We couldn't stand on our own two feet and take this risk," Leiweke told the Seattle Times at the time.

According to the Justice Department, Leiweke and Oak View protected Ticketmaster's business and agreed to steer clear of other opportunities, such as promoting artists, that would tread on Live Nation's turf.

Once, Oak View tried pitching itself to an artist who had been promoted by Live Nation, and was scolded by Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino for doing so, according to the lawsuit. "All know we don't promote and we only do tours with Live Nation," Leiweke wrote in apology to Rapino that was later cited in the lawsuit.

When the University of Texas wanted a new basketball arena that could host other events, Oak View again paired with Live Nation to bid for the project.

To entice Jerry Jones's Legends Hospitality to join Oak View's team instead of offering its own bid, Leiweke agreed to give Legends the contracts to run the food and beverage and premium-seating services at the new arena, according to prosecutors. Oak View secured the arena contract by March 2018.

In 2022, Live Nation expanded the partnership and agreed to pay Oak View about $7.5 million annually to ensure that Ticketmaster was the exclusive ticketing provider at Oak View's venues. The Justice Department said Oak View failed to disclose that arrangement to the owners of arenas that it managed.

"I never want to be competitors," Leiweke wrote to Rapino.

Assefi, Trump's choice to run the antitrust division temporarily in the early days of his second term, believed Leiweke should be charged over the Texas episode, people familiar with the matter said. He granted a nonprosecution agreement to the companies involved. Assefi declined to comment.

Leiweke had pleaded not guilty and planned to argue that Legends would have been a subcontractor on the arena and never would have been a qualified bidder for the whole job, according to people familiar with his case.

Live Nation recently asked a Manhattan federal court to rule for the company in the broader civil case. The Justice Department exaggerated its market share and has failed to develop any evidence that Ticketmaster harmed artists or venues, it said. Only "a single artist" was deposed by the government during 2 1/2 years of investigation and litigation, it said.

Azoff could be called as a witness in the case, and might have testified if Leiweke had gone to trial. The men later fell out over the disparate treatment they received in the criminal investigation.

Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com and Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com