AEG Plans to Ditch On-Sales In Latest axs Announcement

This article was updated at 8:50 P.M. PST

REPORTING FROM LOS ANGELES - Is the era of the Saturday morning on-sale over?

AEG unveiled plans to ditch the once-a-week, mad dash for tickets in place of a more fair, lottery-based system during its annual company meeting at L.A. Live on Monday. Employees and partners of AEG also got a first glimpse at the new cable TV channel AEG is launching with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, producer Ryan Seacrest and CAA. 

The announcement signals two big bets for AEG and Cuban — that fans are ready to abandon the Saturday on-sale regime, but aren't quite ready to give up on live television, which Cuban said is a better distribution channel for live content than internet video. 

“The future of television is television,” proclaimed Cuban, explaining that he still prefers cable distribution over sites like YouTube. His new axs TV channel will replace the 10-year-old HDNet cable station. Popular programs like Dan Rather Reports and Guys Night In! will be augmented with live footage from concerts and special events. Cuban said the station will be built on live, real-time programming.

“Viral is done — viral is boring. Why? Because it already happened,” he said. “axs TV is about live. When something happens in music or pop culture, we want that destination on television. We want it on axs.”

An axs studio is being built at L.A. Live and will anchor the station with a news show called axs Live (still a working title, Cuban says), formatted like ESPN’s SportsCenter, but for music and live entertainment. The station will be tied to the axs ticketing system, developed by Outbox Technologies following AEG’s split with Ticketmaster in early 2010.

As for the death of on-sales, AEG's President of Digital, Ticketing and Media Bryan Perez said the days of spending several hours on a computer trying to get tickets for high-demand concerts will soon be replaced with Fair axs, a new program where fans can prepurchase tickets in advance of the on-sale. If more fans try to purchase tickets than are available, the tickets will be awarded in a random lottery. If there are still tickets left, those tickets will be sold during the initial on-sale. A fan will give axs their credit card number and purchase information and select up to three seat locations when requesting tickets.

Once the list of buyers is built, Perez said his team can comb the requests and weed out scalpers and ticket brokers — it puts the promoter at an advantage and makes bot buyers less potent.

“Secondly, we can make it random so everyone has a fair shot, not just those with the fastest Internet connection.”

Also axs announced plans to allow buyers to reserve tickets for friends on Facebook — instead of one friend buying eight tickets to a concert and trying to get their friends to pay them back, each user on Facebook is sent a purchase code to complete their own transaction.

Finally, axs is teaming up with ESPN and other content providers to move tickets on other distribution channels.

“We’re going to be able to sell tickets on any partner's website,” Perez said. If a fan was reading an article on ESPN.com about an L.A. Kings game, they’d also see a widget in the story that would allow them to buy tickets without leaving the page. Perez said axs is exploring partnerships with Target, Coca-Cola and American Express to help distribute tickets.

“These companies will have a vested interest in our success, because this enhances their partnership and execution with us,” he said.

Interviewed for this article: Bryan Perez, (213) 742-7155