Tixr Inks Deal With MassConcerts, Including Ticketing At New Asheville Yards Venue

Privately held ticketing and event platform Tixr has announced a deal with New England-based concert promoter MassConcerts, which brings three large-scale amphitheaters into Tixr’s coast-to-coast network of summer sheds, including the newly rebranded Asheville Yards in Asheville, North Carolina.

“Tixr is an incredible new partner for us — helping us better serve fans, fight scalpers, and maximize every show,” said MassConcerts President John Peters. “Their platform gives us the flexibility to handle everything from large, complex amphitheater shows with multiple tiers and VIP options to simple GA club shows. Beyond the technology, their team is attentive and easy to work with, which makes a huge difference. We’re already using features like self-service ticket upgrades and the on-platform waitlist to improve the experience for everyone.”

The exclusive ticketing deal includes MassConcerts-operated amphitheaters in Outer Harbor (Buffalo), Snow Pond Center for the Arts – Bowl in the Pines (Sidney, Maine) and Asheville Yards as well as all other venues operated and controlled by the promoter, including the Worcester Palladium in Massachusetts and Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut.

“For me, what’s most exciting about the progress that Tixr is making in the amphitheater space specifically is that you do have a lot of these city-run venues that don’t really know that there’s an alternative out there that is modern and can handle their business,” says Sara Mertz, VP of Music Venues at Tixr. “I’ve been personally very excited as there are new amphitheaters opening all over, in the midst of a lot of volatility in the marketplace. We’ve continued to have great word-of-mouth, organic growth, which is part of why I came to the company, to be able to work with a platform that people were excited about and happy with, so they wanted to tell all their friends about it, and we continue to grow our client base because of that.”

MassConcerts’ upcoming amphitheater season features Vampire Weekend (June 2 at Asheville Yards); beabadoobee (June 11 at Asheville Yards); Megan Moroney (July 19 at Outer Harbor); Lyle Lovett (July 31 at Bowl in the Pines); Ethel Cain (Aug. 30 at Asheville Yards, Sept. 13 at Outer Harbor); and MJ Lenderman (Oct. 15 at Asheville Yards). Other upcoming shows include Dance Gavin Dance (May 25 at The Palladium, Worcester, MA); Mayday Parade (June 1 at The Strand Ballroom in Providence, Rhode Island); and The Story So Far (Oct. 3 at The Palladium Outdoors, Worcester, Mass.).

The MassConcerts deal adds to other recent partnerships for the company, including venue clients Whitewater Amphitheater in Texas, Timber Rock Amphitheater in Pennsylvania, Amp Ballantyne in Charlotte, Cook’s Garage in Lubbock, Texas, and others. Other promoter partners onboarded recently include DSP Shows, Rising Sun Presents, Ineffable Live and LNE Presents.

The platform boasts a clean interface and modern take on ticketing, able to handle multiple bundling, VIP, merchandise and other ticketing needs for venues, festivals, cruises and other destination events looking for hands-on ticketing capabilities. Depending on the type of venue or event, this can mean providing data to help clients’ other adjacent business like food and beverage or merchandise.

“We try to give our clients as much power as we can with the data they’re able to collect on the ticket buyers and things like that so that they can use that to keep growing their businesses,” Mertz said.

Asheville Yards, the rebranding of the former Rabbit Rabbit, officially reopened April 26 with Trampled By Turtles, at all general admission and around 4,000 capacity.

“It was great,” said Mertz, having attended the reopening-night concert. “They’re a great band and it was a good show and great crowd. For a venue opening, it was, it was stellar in terms of the staff, there were no big lines, everyobody got in and people were super friendly. It was pretty cool for a venue that was literally having its first show.”