From August, patrons to Melbourne Park’s multi-arenas and Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion will find a difference in the way they book and access tickets, and how their fan experience is enhanced.
Both have now appointed as their ticketing partners AXS, the ticketing arm of global promoter AEG, which has developed its own technology.
“We have a globally connected platform, so we can have all our technology operating around the world brought to Melbourne and Sydney,” explains Andrew Travis, Melbourne-based CEO of AXS Australia & New Zealand.
“It’s really about making it easier and connecting the fans as seamlessly as possible to the acts they love.
“We use the Mobile ID to reduce the friction points for the fans, make it easy for them to manage their tickets and ensure they are secure. These are some of the changes they’ll see when they start to use our technology.”
How Mobile ID works is the patron signs to the AXS app, using their email address. They are allocated an identity via a QR code. Every ticket purchased by the fan sits in that QR code, which is saved to their Apple or Google wallet.
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“You only have to do it once and it’s there for life,” Travis explains. “The other feature is group entry. So if you have multiple tickets in your code, it’s one scan for entry for all. Currently a family of four is looking for different tickets and scanning them separately.”
AXS offerings abroad include dynamic barcodes that keep changing so they can’t be copied by scalpers, and biometric authentication which allows users to log in securely and access their tickets using facial recognition or fingerprint scanning.
The AXS Fan account offers a centralised digital dashboard where fans can view, manage, transfer or upgrade tickets in one location, while an integrated resale unified platform is for fans to buy and sell tickets.
Fifteen Years
AXS set up in Los Angeles fifteen years ago. It was part of AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group)’s vertical integration model which includes world tours, festivals such as Coachella and Stagecoach, 100 arenas, stadiums and theatres, sports teams, and real estate.
AXS has steadily expanded as a direct competitor to Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, building on AEG’s growth to become the second biggest promoter in the world.
It operates in nine countries with 1,600 partners covering venues, festivals, sports organizations and live entertainment across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific.
The venues include The O2 Arena in London and the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, both 20,000-seaters. The O2 Arena shifted 2.9 million tickets in 2025.
While marketing its technology as designed to help clients deepen fan engagement while maximising business performance, it delivers more than 70 million tickets each year.
AXS entered the Australian market three years ago, demonstrating its capabilities on Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour and country music festival CMC Rocks. Both were through Frontier Touring, which is owned by AEG.
With the two August deals kicking in, “We’ve definitely got momentum in this market,” says Travis.
The Melbourne Park deal, first announced earlier in the year, “was a defining milestone for us in our global growth. It’s an iconic destination, and a high traffic one.”
Set on 40 hectares of parkland on the banks of the Birrarung (Yarra River), Melbourne Park’s venues include Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena, John Cain Arena, and Kia Arena. It attracted 2.7 million visitors to 455 events across the year excluding the Australian Open.
The 5,500-seat Hordern Pavilion opened in 1924 and, according to Pollstar, shifted 154,555 tickets in 2025.
Travis asserts, “It’s an honour to partner with such an iconic venue and bring our fan-first technology to support its continued success.”
As reported in The Music in 2024, AEG bought into Hordern Pavilion owner Playbill that year to operate the venue.
Playbill Group was established in Sydney in 1958 by Brian and Jocelyn Nebenzahl, and now headed by CEO Michael Nebenzahl. It also merchandises for theatrical productions including musicals, national theatre and music companies in 12 countries, and partners with major sporting teams and operates venue concessions across the country and in Asia.
As AXS expands in Australia and New Zealand, its prime focus with its new customers is “to get the fundamentals right. We ensure the first experience for fans is as seamless as possible.
“We make them realise we ensure real fans get tickets, and that they know we are keeping the bots out. We spend millions and millions of dollars on bot protection, and that gives fans the confidence.”
Down the track, AXS will offer venues other aspects of their technology. “The decision is the venue’s. We’re globally connected but each market is different (and) every event is different.
“What we've learned from individual markets, whether it’s France or Germany or Singapore, we can offer our data on speed of entry or bot protection.”
For instance, the AXS Venue Operations technology could also be used to buy exclusive merchandise for quick delivery, or pick-up food and drinks without waiting in line, and digital add-ons like last minute seat upgrades.
Melbourne Park Chief Executive John Harnden AM said the partnership was about improving the end-to-end fan experience.
“This partnership with AXS continues our focus on elevating the fan experience at Melbourne Park, delivering a world-class ticketing journey to match our world-class sports, music and entertainment experiences,” he said.
Superfans
The era of Superfans has not only meant changes to venue layouts while promoters are considering VIP tiers. Ticketing companies around the world too are taking advantage of the fact avid fans will pay more.
For instance, there are verified registration systems to ensure fans get the tickets, and dynamic pricing has been a controversial introduction.
Spotify’s move into selling tickets saw it introduce Spotify Reserved: by checking on a superfan’s listening habits, the platform puts aside four tickets to purchase before they go on general sale.
“The next chapter will be personalisation, how do you talk to fans one on one rather than a generic one,” Travis suggests.
“It’s still an evolving space. But it varies with different venues, different sporting teams and different promoters. How do you get your head around personalised experiences that ensure fans keep coming back?
“It’s not going to be an easy answer for all. It’s tailoring and customisation. Venues will have a challenge meeting these changing consumer expectations. Venues only make changes when they are shown data that that’s what fans are looking for. Our (AXS) data will be the driving force behind these.”
The real-time analytics and data feed that AXS provides to client venues and promoters abroad include insight into their marketing efforts, and instant tracking of event sales and ticket scanning.
It also provides a detailed break-down of patrons, including their preferences and transactions, which the AXS website says is gathered through digital ticketing and RFID (radio-frequency identification) technologies.
“From our point of view, it’s how do we provide that easy, flexible, and reliable platform that underpins all this and enables the venues to make all these changes in real quick time and make better decisions. It’s about accessing the right data.”
He adds: “Accessing data is all important. We also have the right balance between privacy and security.”
AXS is amping up in the Australian market, where sources estimate TEG’s Ticketek has a 70% to 72% market share, and Live Nation’s Ticketmaster is about 26%.
Asked about the strategies that AXS will adopt to wrest market share, Travis responds: “We’ve been pretty transparent about how we’ve entered this market. It’s about performance.
“We have the ability to leverage what is a global business, with significant capability and proven credentials, and it’s been about bringing them in and given the opportunities to work with partners in this business, and show them easy and reliable and secure technology.
“We don’t need to change that. We just need to execute it really well and let the performance do the talking.”
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
