Paramore’s Sydney gig a big one for band and ticketing tech firm AXS
When US rock act Paramore played to about 25,000 fans at The Domain in Sydney, there were some nerves behind the scenes for the newest entrant to the Australian live ticketing market.
For the headline act, it was a landmark event in a 20-year career; for the ticketing company whose paperless technology powered the turnstiles, it was an overwhelming success.
When US rock act Paramore played to about 25,000 fans at The Domain in Sydney on Saturday, there were some nerves behind the scenes for the small team at AXS, the newest entrant to the Australian live ticketing market.
Led by flame-haired singer Hayley Williams, the Grammy Award-winning band from Tennessee later confirmed the scale of the event in a social media post: “Our biggest headlining show thus far. Thank you Sydney.”
The same could be said for the Australian arm of AXS, pronounced “access”. According to chief executive Andrew Travis, the lack of entry issues on the night signalled that its ticketing app is well and truly market-ready for big events.
“Our job is to make the whole thing as seamless as possible, so people can get in and focus on the event, which is what they’re all there for: to see their favourite artist, or their favourite sports team,” he told The Australian.
“We took about 100 or 150 [ticketing] queries on the night, and out of 25,300 people, I thought that was a pretty low percentage,” said Travis. “We were pleased to see that the system was tested to that crowd level, and came through with flying colours.”
A brief interruption in wi-fi connectivity at The Domain did not affect the entry process for thousands of fans, as the company’s digital scanners are able to operate offline by downloading all ticketholders’ QR codes in advance.
Globally, AXS sells about $US3.5bn worth of tickets to more than 30,000 events each year. Its clients include the annual Coachella music festival, as well as major venues such as London’s O2 Arena and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, which is home to the city’s two NBA teams.
In Australia, however, AXS is an unknown quantity to most live event attendees: prior to the Paramore concert, its app technology had underpinned about a dozen events this year, with the largest being a Queensland Premier Rugby event at Ballymore for about 7800 ticketholders in August.
Since entering the market in May, the Melbourne-based AXS team has been seeking to provide ticketing services to theatres, arenas and stadiums across the nation.
Most major venues have multi-year, exclusive contracts in place with one of the two largest ticketing service providers in Ticketmaster – which is owned by Live Nation – and Ticketek, which is owned by TEG, while independent Australian company Oztix works directly with events and venues.
“We’re active in the marketplace, talking to all those [exclusive] venues that are coming up; there’s a rolling cycle of them that’ll come out of contract,” said Travis, who noted the company is in currently in four tender discussions.
In partnership with promoter Frontier Touring, the next concerts to be powered by AXS include select shows by artists including Jackson Browne, Kraftwerk, Australian blues act The Teskey Brothers and British electronic music veterans The Chemical Brothers.
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