Bareback riding at RodeoHouston 2014
RodeoHouston is switching to the AEG-owned AXS ticket platform for the 2015 season, rodeo officials announced Tuesday.
Leroy Shafer, VP and COO for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo confirmed the March 3-22, 2015 event will be sold exclusively on AXS tickets.
“We’ve been evaluating ticketing systems for the past five years and within the past 24 months, we began accepting proposals for a new ticketing system,” he explained.
The announcement ends the Rodeo’s long-standing relationship with Ticketmaster that dates back to the early 1980s — RodeoHouston used several pre-Ticketmaster systems including Ticketron and BASS Tickets, firms that were eventually acquired by Ticketmaster.
Shafer said a problematic on-sale for the 2014 season was cause for concern — “we’ve always put 20 shows on sale at the same time and this year we ran into extreme difficulty with the volume of tickets — we were frequently overwhelming the system.”
He said he liked AXS’ virtual waiting room and cloud-based servers. He also said AXS was the first system that could integrate with RodeoHouston’s massive database — about 60-percent of tickets to RodeoHouston are first sold to season ticket holders.
“And this agreement allows us to own our own data,” something they hadn’t completely controlled in the past.
The agreement also marks an important milestone for the three-year-old AXS. RodeoHouston is one of the largest non-AEG event to utilize AXS. The 2013 event which included 20 concerts including a farewell performance by George Strait grossed $39.1 million. In 2014, 2.5 million people attended RodeoHouston and 1.4 million attended one of 20 concerts. RodeoHouston is held ever year at 75,000-capacity NRG Stadium in Houston (formerly known as Reliant Park).
AXS Tickets already has a presence in Houston — since 2012, it's powered sales at BBVA Stadium, home to the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer.
“The online ticketing application is very user-friendly and the back of house system is different than what most box office professionals have used in the past and it’s gotten great reception,” said BBVA Stadium General Manager Doug Hall.
“Bringing on additional clients will grow AXS from a brand recognition standpoint and help establish a larger footprint in the Houston market,” he added.
AXS Tickets was first launched in August 2011 — early executives included former Ticketmaster founder Fred Rosen and Outbox Enterprises Jean-Françoys Brousseau. AEG is both an equity partner and a client of Outbox, originally created for Cirque du Soleil. AXS was born out of a severed relationship with Ticketmaster. When Ticketmaster finalized its merger with AEG’s competitor Live Nation in 2010, AEG enacted an exit clause in its contract. AXS is now one of Ticketmaster’s main competitors.
The contract with AXS Tickets is for three years with the option to terminate after the first year.
“We’re not going to lock ourselves into a system again,” said Shafer. “The sales process is constantly changing and we need the ability to respond.”
Interviewed for this article: Leroy Shafer, (832) 667-1200; Doug Hall, (713) 547-3000