AEG's New AXS Invite Ticketing Service Brings Social Networking To Ticket Purchasing

AEG is making it “easier to book concert and sports tickets for friends without having to pay for them all at once,” debuting AXS Invite at “some of its owned and operated venues starting this month,” according to the AP. The service allows ticket buyers “to pay for their own seats and then reserve several adjacent ones online.” The purchaser then “invites friends through Facebook or email, and the friends have 48 hours to accept or decline the invitation.” The invited purchasers in turn “register on the site and pay for the tickets themselves,” with unsold tickets going “back up for sale.” AXS Invite “won't be available immediately when tickets are first put on sale, which means it probably won't be useful for quickly sold-out shows.” AXS.com Senior VP & GM Tom Andrus said that the feature “could be available within hours or the next day, but certainly within 48 hours of a given sale time.” AEG launched its AXS ticketing arm about a year ago and “has so far changed 18 of its approximately 100 owned and operated venues over to AXS from ticketing competitor Ticketmaster” (AP, 10/12). In Dallas, Mario Tarradell noted AXS Invite “applies to sporting games and other events such as Cirque du Soleil.” AXS Invite is “currently being used in venues in nine markets: Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Minnesota, Ontario, San Francisco, Saratoga and Seattle” (DALLASNEWS.com, 10/12).