SALON

Friday, Oct 12, 2012 1:45 PM UTC

AEG to allow booking of adjacent seats for friends

By

Topics: From the Wires,

LOS ANGELES (AP) — AEG, the sports and entertainment giant that is up for sale, is making it easier to book concert and sports tickets for friends without having to pay for them all at once.

The owner of Staples Center and the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings is rolling out the feature, called AXS Invite, at some of its owned and operated venues starting this month.

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. They in turn register on the site and pay for the tickets themselves. Unsold tickets will go back up for sale.

“For us and for the artist and the venue, it’s really about finding a way to sell more tickets,” said Tom Andrus, general manager of AXS.com. “For the customer it’s a way of making it more convenient.”

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. Andrus said the feature could be available within hours or the next day, but certainly within 48 hours of a given sale time.

AEG is rolling out the service for a number of upcoming shows, including a run of “Cirque du Soleil: Dralion” at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, Calif., from Oct. 24-28.

AEG launched its ticketing arm, AXS, 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. It plans to roll AXS out at most of its major venues including Los Angeles’ Staples Center by the first half of next year.

AEG won the right to use Ticketmaster’s platform as a condition for getting government clearance of the combination of Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment Inc. in 2010. But it still has to pay fees to use it. Changing venues to its own AXS platform saves on these fees, and also gives AEG a closer relationship with its customers.

Last month, Denver-based Anschutz Co. said it was putting AEG up for sale even as it moved ahead with plans to build a stadium in Los Angeles in the hopes of attracting a National Football League team.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations