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AXS is ramping up its European ambitions with two senior executive hires designed to accelerate the ticketing company’s growth across the region. The company has appointed Peter Quinlan as managing director of Europe, and Hannah Rouch as vp of marketing in Europe — both newly created roles that will operate out of London and report to AXS’s international division.
Quinlan will oversee all European operations and lead the company’s regional strategy, reporting to Blaine Legere, president of AXS International. Rouch will report to Quinlan and spearhead marketing efforts across the continent, with a mandate to expand brand awareness and drive audience growth for the ticketing platform.
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“Europe remains a critical growth engine for AXS, and these appointments mark an important step forward in our continued evolution,” Legere said in a statement. “Peter’s global experience and operational acumen, combined with Hannah’s deep marketing expertise and track record of execution, will be instrumental as we continue to scale and deliver across the region.”
Quinlan joins AXS after 18 years at Live Nation Entertainment, where he held leadership roles across marketing, sponsorship, and ticketing. He most recently served in a global executive capacity at Ticketmaster, overseeing commercial partnerships, payments, fraud operations and other revenue initiatives. His new role puts him at the center of AXS’s European expansion strategy at a time when the company continues to compete with Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, CTS Eventim and other players across the territory.
“There’s tremendous opportunity for growth — especially in Europe, where promoters, venues and artists are looking for innovative, transparent partners with technology that can scale and deliver,” Quinlan said. “I’m excited to help lead that charge.”
Rouch joins AXS from Gumtree/eBay, where she led a brand repositioning for the marketplace and previously held marketing leadership roles at Motors.co.uk and Bauer Media. Her remit will include strengthening the AXS brand across all European markets and building a marketing infrastructure to support both promoter clients and consumer initiatives.
“I’m thrilled and energized to take on this role at a time of significant growth for AXS across Europe,” Rouch said. “Our focus will be on strengthening our brand and reach across Europe and building out marketing as a growth engine for the business – accelerating our ability to deliver for our clients and enhancing our efforts to ‘hold the hand of the fan’ from show discovery to live event.”
The hires come as AXS continues to grow its international footprint, with partnerships spanning festivals, arenas, sports franchises, and touring artists. The expansion also reflects the company’s broader strategy to scale its global technology platform and deepen its presence outside the U.S.
“These new appointments reflect AXS’s ongoing commitment to scale, unify, and empower our international teams,” Legere added. “With this expanded leadership structure, we’re better positioned than ever to deliver world-class support for our clients and partners.”
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When scrolling through TikTok following the onsale of Chappell Roan’s Visions of Damsels & Other Dangers Things tour dates, Foundations Artists Management’s Lauren McKinney noticed something interesting: In a stark contrast to most fans of major artists in 2025, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive.
McKinney and Roan’s team at Foundations scrolled the social media site to find “fans being excited they got tickets, and saying how calm the process was and how nice it was that they weren’t having to battle other fans,” McKinney told the audience at Billboard’s 2025 Live Music Summit in Los Angeles on Monday (Nov. 3) during a panel titled “No Bots Allowed: Inside Chappell Roan’s Fan-First Ticketing Strategy.” She added, “Our team was just so happy with that.”
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Wasserman Music Nashville’s Kristen Mitchell echoed McKinney’s excitement about the results of the ticketing strategy that they, along with AXS ticketing, implemented to ensure tickets for Roan’s nine-show summer run made it into the hands of fans instead of resellers. “I was obsessively reloading the AXS mobile reporting app, and I saw that at the Kansas City show, it was a 97% check-in. So, there was very little attrition. That’s incredible,” said Mitchell.
In 2025, concerts across the country are seeing higher-than-normal attrition rates (where far fewer fans show up to shows than the number of tickets sold) because many tickets are purchased during onsale and immediately placed on the secondary market for double or triple the face value. When fans are unable or unwilling to pay those exorbitant prices, those seats are left empty at the venues.
When tickets went on sale for Roan’s stadium dates, she and her team knew the demand for tickets would far outweigh the demand, so they turned to Fair AXS for a slower approach to selling tickets.
As Billboard reported in the 2025 touring issue, Roan’s fans signed up over a three-day period, after which AXS used a proprietary system to verify that each registrant was a real person, including those who had purchased Roan tickets in the past. AXS then delivered a list of registrants who met the criteria to her agents at Wasserman. The AXS team subsequently released a batch of ticket-purchasing invitations to fans across 24 hours. Based on the ratio of those fans who actually purchased the tickets, they subsequently released a second batch the following day, and a third the day after that.
“It requires a lot of trust in the fan to be patient in that process and know that they will have to sign up, wait a week, maybe receive an email,” McKinney said during the panel. “Overall, we learned that people are willing to be patient and willing to jump through some additional steps, if they can feel like the end result is equitable and that it’s a fair process all.”
AXS head of North American venues Dean Dewulf added that with Fair AXS, “we’re essentially deconstructing [the onsale] process.”
“We essentially are having a unlimited registration window where everybody can register. And what’s really important about that is that fans have two to four days, depending on the configuration of the program, to register when it’s convenient for them,” Dewulf explained on the panel, moderated by Billboard’s touring director Dave Brooks. “Once the registration ends, then we run it through our process to essentially hand pick and invite specific fans to buy the tickets.”
The process is a lot more intensive than a typical onsale and requires a lot more human power. As Mitchell joked, “AXS was not sleeping.”
“This was such a great passion project for a lot of the folks that worked on this,” said Dewulf on the panel. “We loved every minute. Honestly, this is why I got into the business. I don’t know about any of you, but getting tickets in the hands of real fans is really cool.”
When asked about how they deal with tickets that do end up on the secondary market, Mitchell said Wasserman has worked with AXS to combat the high prices by fighting fire with fire.
“AXS has something called AXS Distro, which actually allows you to — it sounds counterintuitive — but you’re feeding tickets to the secondary market. But you’re undercutting the pricing,” Mitchell said. “So, what happens when you undercut the pricing is people aren’t purchasing those higher price tickets.”
“I don’t know that that exists across other platforms, but I personally think that might be the future of what we’re looking at in ticketing,” Mitchelle continued. “I’m not saying that we want scalping, but it’s going to be there no matter what. So, it’s really on us as an industry to figure out how we’re dealing with that, and, in some cases, competing with it.”
AXS, AEG’s ticketing and event access platform, is launching a new global biometric authentication feature for its mobile app across all smart phone devices. The technology marks the first time a ticketing smart phone app utilizes biometric security features, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to provide users with a secure way to access their […]
AXS, the AEG-owned ticketing company, on Nov. 4 announced the acquisition of a white-label ticketing company called white label eCommerce. The latter company, a Hamburg start-up founded in 2012 that has about 35 employees, currently sells tickets to festivals, sports events and some concerts, but not under its own name. White label eCommerce will become […]
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