In-Depth
World Congress 2020: Bryan Perez
Chief Executive Officer, AXS
On how the ticketing business is operating and running with no live events:
PerezGeorge W. DeLoache
I was charting our sales over the last seven days and you could just see the cliff. I mean we are selling a handful of tickets, but only for events that are very, very far off. Right now all of our music events have been canceled for the month of March and today the month of April. So we’re seeing thousands of events that are either going into a straight cancellation mode or a postponed mode, which is actually I think a little bit more challenging. But there’s a tremendous amount of activity on our side.
So even though we’re not selling the tickets, we’re actually in the process, in many instances, of refunding the tickets or changing the status of the event from a certain date, maybe an uncertain date — the TBD — and then dealing in the contact center with customers who have questions about that. There’s still a lot of information to come in the broader live event industry in terms of how many of these events are actually going to be able to be rescheduled and what happens then. So we’re really, really busy to be quite honest; even though we’re not selling the tickets, we’re certainly servicing a lot of tickets.
On the response from ticket buyers:
People aren’t panicking as it relates to their events. We’re trying to do the best job we can, proactively telling them in most instances, “hang on to your tickets when there’s a rescheduled date, here’s what’s going to happen.” They’re taking that information to heart. People are hanging in there, and I think that one bodes well for our industry that when the events do come back, the people want to go.
On impact on the ticketing business:
You’re going to see far more disruption on the resale side just because of the nature of the business.
On collaboration within the industry:
We’re all trying to coordinate and speak to the fans with a single voice and with a single approach. So I’ve been really heartened with the conversations that I’ve had with people who might otherwise be competitors on a normal day, that we’re all really focused on how to get through this together and how to communicate consistently to the fan.
We’re all in a business that we love, and we’re fortunate to be in it. I think now’s the time where you recognize that and we can get back to being competitors when the dust settles. But right now we need to be coming together as an industry to save it, to deal with this rationally and calmly, but consistently.
