AOL, Ticketmaster Aim for Boffo Box Office

America Online, Inc., is teaming with Ticketmaster to provide greater access to event ticketing, movie ticketing, and personals services for online consumers.

Terms of the multi-year agreement were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, Los Angeles-based Ticketmaster’s event ticketing services will be distributed to users of all of AOL Time Warner’s America Online properties through a new “AOL Box Office By Ticketmaster,” which will offer consumers an tickets to concerts, theater and sporting events and performing arts.

In addition to the branded online ticket services, Ticketmaster’s local city guides will offer AOL Moviefone movie information and ticketing, and Ticketmaster’s Match.com will be the premier provider of personals to America Online’s Love@AOL. The Match.com service will be offered across AOL, AOL.COM, CompuServe and Netscape.com.

“This joint initiative marks the first time America Online and Ticketmaster have worked together, and we believe it represents a new era for the areas in which we will collaborate,” said John Pleasants, president and chief executive officer of Ticketmaster. “By combining our event information and ticketing transaction capability with AOL’s unparalleled audience, we substantially increase our ticketing distribution network. For Citysearch’s three million users, the addition of AOL Moviefone’s movie ticketing services adds the convenience of purchasing movie tickets online to our complete guide of where to go and what to do in your city.”

AOL Box Office users will be able to find detailed information about the Ticketmaster event of their choice by category, venue, or date, and will be able to purchase tickets through a co-branded site. Online consumers also will have access to tickets for selected Ticketmaster events throughout the year in advance of the general public through exclusive Box Office pre-sale events.

Ticketmaster, which is majority-owned by USA Networks, sold more than 83 million tickets last year — valued at approximately $3.3 billion — through approximately 3,500 retail Ticket Center outlets, 16 worldwide telephone call centers, and ticketmaster.com. By offering access to the more than 31 million combined AOL and CompuServe members and the tens of millions of additional users of AOL’s Web-based brands, Ticketmaster should significantly increase its online distribution.

“We are pleased to partner with Ticketmaster to offer our users the AOL Box Office By Ticketmaster — a one-stop service for consumers to plan their entertainment night out,” said Donn Davis, president of the Dulles, Va.-based AOL Interactive Properties. “The combination of our extraordinary brands creates the ultimate experience for people looking for local entertainment choices.”