New online ticket service takes on Ticketmaster
Published 5:00 am Tuesday, August 23, 2011
In the latest volley of the entertainment industry’s ticketing wars, Anschutz Entertainment Group, a concert promoter that owns major arenas like the Staples Center in Los Angeles and the O2 in London, will begin selling tickets to its concerts this weekend through a new website it has developed to compete with Ticketmaster.
AEG, which is owned by the Anschutz Co., will announce today its new ticketing brand, AXS (pronounced “access”), and a website, axs.com, that on Saturday will begin selling tickets for events at two spaces in Denver that AEG operates, the Bluebird Theater and the Ogden Theater. The company created axs .com with Outbox Enterprises, a ticketing startup whose co-chief executive is Fredric Rosen, Ticketmaster’s chief for much of the 1980s and ’90s.
In its announcement, AEG refers to several aspects of ticketing that Ticketmaster consumers have long complained about. Axs .com will display the full prices for tickets, counting all fees, and the company also says it will never charge to let people print their tickets at home. (Over the past year Ticketmaster has made efforts to disclose most of its fees up front and eliminate the print-at-home fee, although those changes have not been made throughout the entire site.)