JANUARY | FEATURE
AXS provides ticketing services globally for AEG venues including London ’ s The O2 arena ( cap , 21,000 ) and The SSE Arena , Wembley , along with festivals such as British Summer Time ( 65,000 ) and All Points East ( 40,000 ).
The Covid crisis has led to a 90 % drop in sales at AXS , according to director of ticketing , UK , Paul Newman , but he says the team has been busy despite the downturn : “ We made a conscious decision to focus on development . We launched digital tickets at The O2 arena a couple of years ago , as we could see the way ticketing was going even before this crisis hit , but it has accelerated everything .
“ While there is a vaccine , it ’ ll be going to the vulnerable and elderly first so we need a solution in place in order for events and festivals to happen next summer .”
“ A big thing for us has been the sharing of our digital ticketing technology with other ticket agents . That is particularly useful now because The O2 is committed to being 100 % digital , not just with tickets but contactless access and transactions .”
Newman says the expectation is that by spring , all shows that go on sale at the arena will be on a digital ticket .
As well as providing digital ticketing , AXS is also able to help Covid-safe event operators in other ways including social distancing and staggered entry .
“ Staggered entry is very simple technology that we use for selling exhibitions , you sell in various time slots , that is not much of an issue but if anybody wants to do staggered egress that is an altogether different scenario ,” says Newman .
Mobile traction
Vivendi subsidiary See Tickets has offices throughout Europe , and is the second biggest agency in the UK , behind Ticketmaster . It has expanded swiftly in the US since opening its first office there in 2014 .
A couple of years ago See Tickets rolled out a tout-proof digital ticket solution that involves a dynamically refreshing barcode that is impossible to duplicate .
See Tickets chief executive Rob Wilmshurst says that since the Covid crisis struck , the company has “ doubled down on tech ” and focused heavily on digital ticketing .
“ We were very quick to repurpose our manual access control devices towards contactless and this has been very well received in other segments we address outside of music . We have also seen a massive upswing in digital ticket delivery to mobile .”
Another operator that has refined and evolved its systems to work with Covidsafe events is Red Box Tickets & Events . As well as providing an integrated white label ticketing service , access control and wi-fi systems for a wide range of clients including All White Coco , Dixie Fields festival , Wicked Hathern Festival and Cowal Gathering , it works with numerous major non-music events including the Southampton Boat Show and Santa Pod Raceway .
Red Box founder Paul Luck says there has been a significant move toward mobile tickets but another focus has been working with clients to streamline the refund or credit process for cancelled events : “ As well as being able to action refunds , we enable ticket buyers to go online and claim a credit for a whole or part-cancelled event . So , if someone has purchased a three-day ticket but only two days of the event went ahead you can offer them a 33 % refund for that one day .”
Rising to the test
Wilmshurst says he is aware of numerous ideas being circulated about pre-event testing and his company is prepared to get involved when called upon but he says the use of private customer health records in order to provide admission to events is an issue that must be looked at carefully .
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