The O2 ’ s general manager
Steve Sayer
tickets were sold not just for the UK but right across Europe ,” says Langford .
While the initiative was an obvious benefit to O2 customers , Griffiths says the music industry took some convincing to get behind it : “ It was a very hard sell . I hear stories that the first O2 Priority Tickets presales did a few hundred tickets but now we are shipping nearly a million tickets a year . So , it ’ s progressed massively in that 15 years and now pre-sales are part of the everyday ticketing business in the UK .”
The O2 VP and general manager Steve Sayer says the partnership with O2 has also been hugely important in enabling the provision of robust connectivity : “ We put in one of the first high-density Wi-Fi networks in the venue about eight years ago , which was a big step up at the time – suddenly you had 15,000 One Direction fans able to concurrently stream content to their social media .”
” The O2 was the first place we installed O2 5G ,” says Griffiths . “ When we have new connectivity technology , we bring it to The O2 first . Wherever you go in The O2 complex you ’ ve got great connectivity .”
In June last year Liberty Global and Telefónica formed a joint venture via the merger of their respective Virgin Media and O2 UK businesses . Griffiths was recently involved in securing a deal that saw Virgin Media become the broadband , TV and gaming partner of The O2 . As a result , Virgin Media will open a new studio space at the venue and connect the arena to its gigabit broadband network .
“ Customer experience at The O2 is what sets it apart , and the connectivity is such an important part of that especially now all the ticketing has moved to digital ,” he says .
AXS All Areas AXS ticketing director Paul Newman joined the AXS team in August 2014 following eight years overseeing ticketing operations at The O2 . AXS had launched in the US in 2010 and went live at The O2 in 2012 . When it took on the ticketing at the arena , AXS was part owned by AEG , in September 2019 AEG acquired it fully .
“ We ’ re a global company , we have hundreds of clients worldwide , but being so close to AEG and The O2 day in day out means that we can work with them on development . We launched our digital ticket and our re-sale in this country with them . The O2 gets our most cutting-edge technology before anybody else in the UK ,” says Newman .
The award-winning AXS Mobile ID tech was launched at The O2 arena last year . It enables customers who purchase tickets from AXS or other agents such as Ticketmaster ,
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