AXS ticketing, the year old subsidiary of entertainment powerhouse AEG, recently announced a new innovation to its online ticketing site — AXS Invite.
AXS Invite is aimed at improving the ticket buying process for groups. All too often, groups wish to purchase tickets near each other for events, but are unable to place the order on a single credit card or ascertain an official head count of group members prior to purchase. AXS’s new feature aims to solve this common purchasing issue.
AXS’s new innovation will allow a single purchaser to buy tickets to an event and then block off seats near his to offer to friends and family. An invite to purchase will be sent to the rest of his group, either through Facebook or e-mail, indicating the seats reserved and giving them a window during which they can purchase the tickets.
Once the friend has been invited, he or she has 48 hours to respond to the request by either clicking through the invite to purchase the tickets or denying to purchase. If the tickets are denied, the original purchaser will be informed and have the option to offer the tickets to a different person. Any tickets that remain unclaimed after the initial 48 hour window will automatically go back into the general ticket pool.
According to AXS.com Senior Vice President and GM Tom Andrus, AXS Invite came about as a means to finally put an end to one member of a group of friends always being forced to bankroll concerts and sporting events. “There’s a core group of people out there who ultimately end up becoming a bank for their friends with social events. By making the whole process easier to invite someone, it will be a win for the consumer, the venue and the artist,” said Andrus in a phone interview with TicketNews®.
For those who might worry that AXS Invite will cause havoc during initial onsales, Andrus assured TicketNews® that will not be an issue. “AXS Invite will go into effect for events after you get past that initial rush of onsales,” said Andrus. As for when in an event’s ticket sale cycle AXS Invite will begin, Andrus said it would be on an event-by-event basis for the time being, but that AXS expects Invite to roll out to more and more AXS events in the coming months.
So far, AXS Invite has been integrated smoothly into several AXS ticketing events. Andrus sees AXS Invite as a strong example of what AXS has to offer the ticket buying public. “We’re real excited about it,” said Andrus, “It’s a great innovation for the customer and it shows what kind of products we want to build with AXS.”
AXS ticketing was developed by AEG in concert with Outbox Entertainment and is the first piece of the greater “AXS experience,” which is being branded as “a new entertainment platform and will serve as AEG’s primary consumer brand.” AXS ticketing allows for consumers to purchase tickets for upcoming events directly from venues, rather than relying on third party distributors. Currently, AXS ticketing is available through nine U.S. markets, with expansion into the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN slated for the coming weeks, and the addition of London’s O2 Arena and Los Angeles’ Staples Center coming in 2013.
