AEG’s “Fair AXS” Ticketing to Include Lottery System
Story by:
Marc Whitman
AEG – the world’s second largest presenter of live music and entertainment events after Live Nation — has announced that they will include a lottery system in their new “Fair AXS” ticketing operation. The goal of the lottery is to help deal with the increasingly maddening problem of ticketing bots making it difficult for fans to get tickets during high-volume ticket onsales. TicketNews.com has all the info:
Under the proposed “Fair AXS” ticketing system, those seeking to buy tickets to events would sign up for a reservation spot rather than battle against thousands of other ticket seekers when the seats go on sale. During the week leading up to the official on sale date, consumers would fill out their information in Fair AXS and provide a credit card number, then choose up to three sections of the venue they would like to purchase tickets in. If the demand for a section is greater than the number of available tickets for a particular event, Fair AXS will create a lottery system for distributing tickets.
Although the new venture hasn’t even launched yet, it’s interesting to see AEG already trying to set itself apart from the Live Nation/Ticketmaster ticketing behemoth. Although lottery systems aren’t necessarily perfect (as most Phish fans already know), they at least do a decent job of getting tickets into the hands of fans rather than “secondary” ticketing services and scalpers.
While I applaud AEG for trying, and love the TicketHorse FlashSeat system in Colorado, nothing short of government legislation and enforcement is going to prevent tickets from being scalped. Plenty of Phish lottery tickets end up on eBay/Craigslist…
Now, if Phish and other artists started cross-referencing lottery orders with mailing list email addresses or merchandise purchases and credit cards, that would help a ton!