BET Partners With AEG And L.A. LIVE To Launch The BET Experience at L.A. LIVE June 28, 29 & 30, 2013

NEW YORK, July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BET Networks has teamed up with AEG and L.A. LIVE to create and produce the first-ever BET Experience at L.A. LIVE, taking place June 28, 29 and 30, 2013 as part of the BET Awards weekend activities. The 2013 BET Awards will be held on June 30 at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE at the center of the downtown Los Angeles sports and entertainment district for the first time.

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The BET Experience at L.A. LIVE is a three day celebration of music, entertainment, and Black culture and will be the largest consumer event in BET Networks' history.  Each day, attendees at the BET Experience at L.A. LIVE will enjoy great performances, participate in TV show tapings, attend thought provoking seminars, interact with sponsor exhibits and connect with their favorite BET programs.  Each night, attendees will have the opportunity to attend concerts in the world famous STAPLES Center featuring superstar iconic artists and party the night away in a variety of clubs and afterparties at L.A. LIVE. 

Also for the first time, a limited number of exclusive early bird ticket packages for the three night STAPLES Center concert series will be available beginning Sunday, July 1st at 8:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm PDT at www.betexperience.com. Packages start at $199, and are also offered at $299 and $399, each including 3-night passes to the concert series.

"We are thrilled to bring BET to life in such an exciting way for our audience.  BET Networks is known for creating memorable stage moments and our partnership with AEG will allow us to create many once-in-a-lifetime moments at the BET Experience at L.A. LIVE for years to come," said Debra Lee, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, BET Networks.

"We are very excited about partnering with BET to create the BET Experience at L.A. LIVE across all of our marquee venues and look forward to hosting the 2013 BET Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE," said Timothy J. Leiweke, President & CEO, AEG.  "This new, signature three-day festival at L.A. LIVE, capped off with the 2013 BET Awards at Nokia Theatre, will be an opportunity for fans to celebrate music, entertainment and culture all together in one location in downtown Los Angeles.  Creating an entire weekend of programming and activities for fans with a great partner like BET is exactly what we envisioned for L.A. LIVE when we opened just a few years ago."

The Experience will feature:

STAPLES Center concert series: Three nights of megastar concerts will be hosted at Los Angeles' most popular and award winning concert venue.

106 & PARK Stage: 106 & PARK, the number one music countdown show, brings the livest audience to Nokia Plaza L.A. LIVE for the weekend with free musical performances, new talent showcases and celebrity sightings.

Club Nokia concert series: The intimate concert venue will house the best in soul music and comedy for two nights.

Music Matters Stage: This free-to-the-public stage will showcase up-and-coming artists associated with the BET Music Matters initiative which has introduced BET Awards show-stopping, Grammy® winning, chart-topping new talent to the world including Melanie Fiona, Marsha Ambrosius, J. Cole, and Luke James.

Sponsor Expo and Fan Fest: A free, open-to-the-public festival, street fair and block party that invites guests to engage with their favorite BET shows and talent and their favorite brands through interactive exhibits, demonstrations and giveaways.

Personal Growth Sessions: BET Experience attendees can participate in uplifting and empowering seminars, panels, and workshops led by some of the most important and influential voices in the community. These sessions are free-with-registration.

Official BET Experience Afterparties:  The hottest late-night parties featuring great DJ's, celebrity appearances and much more!

More BET Experience attractions will be added and announcements coming throughout the next year.  Consumers are encouraged to visit the website, www.betexperience.com to purchase tickets and get updates on talent, programming initiatives, contests, giveaways and more.

About BET Networks

BET Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB), is the nation's leading provider of quality entertainment, music, news and public affairs television programming for the African-American audience. The primary BET channel reaches more than 90 million households and can be seen in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and sub-Saharan Africa. BET is the dominant African-American consumer brand with a diverse group of business extensions: BET.com, a leading Internet destination for Black entertainment, music, culture, and news; CENTRIC, a 24-hour entertainment network targeting the 25- to 54-year-old African-American audience; BET Digital Networks - BET Gospel and BET Hip Hop, attractive alternatives for cutting-edge entertainment tastes; BET Home Entertainment, a collection of BET-branded offerings for the home environment including DVDs and video-on-demand; BET Event Productions, a full-scale event management and production company with festivals and live events spanning the globe; BET operates in the United Kingdom and oversees the extension of BET network programming for global distribution.

About AEG

AEG is one of the leading sports and entertainment presenters in the world. AEG, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Company, owns or is affiliated with a collection of companies including over 100 of the world's preeminent facilities such as STAPLES Center (Los Angeles, CA), The Home Depot Center (Carson, CA), Best Buy Theater (Times Square, New York), Sprint Center, (Kansas City), CA),Target Center (Minneapolis, MN), Mercedes-Benz Arena (Shanghai, China), MasterCard Center (Beijing, China), O2 World Hamburg, O2 World arena (Berlin, Germany) and The O2 arena and entertainment district (London, England) which are all part of the portfolio of AEG Facilities.  Developed by AEG, L.A. LIVE is a 4 million square foot / $2.5 billion downtown Los Angeles sports, residential & entertainment district featuring Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE and Club Nokia, a 54-story, 1001-room convention "headquarters" destination along with entertainment, restaurant and office space that "officially" opened in 2010.  In addition to overseeing privately held management shares of the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA), assets of AEG Sports include franchises and properties such as the 2012 Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings (NHL), Los Angeles Galaxy and the Amgen Tour of California cycling race.  AEG Live, the company's live-entertainment division, is the world's second largest concert promotion and touring companies and is comprised of touring, festival, exhibition, broadcast, merchandise and special event divisions with fifteen regional offices.  AEG Global Partnerships, a division responsible for worldwide sales and servicing of sponsorships naming rights and other strategic partnerships and AEG Merchandising, a multi-faceted merchandising company are also core business units of AEG.  In 2010, AEG launched its AEG 1EARTH environmental program with the release of the industry's first sustainability report while in 2011, AEG introduced axs Ticketing, the first phase of its new entertainment platform serving as the company's primary consumer brand which will also feature a mobile service as well as a video content service now in development. For additional information, visit www.aegworldwide.com.

About L.A. LIVE

Developed by AEG, L.A. LIVE is a 5.9 million square foot / $2.5 billion downtown Los Angeles sports & entertainment district adjacent to STAPLES Center and the Los Angeles Convention Center.  With nineteen world-class restaurants along with venues such as STAPLES Center,  Club Nokia, a 2,300 capacity live music venue; Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE, a 7,100-seat live theatre, the Conga Room and the one-of-a-kind GRAMMY Museum®, saluting the history of music and the genre's best known awards show, L.A. LIVE is the region's most active live content and event destination.  L.A. LIVE is also the home of a 54-story, 1001-room convention "headquarters" destination (featuring The Ritz Carlton and JW Marriott hotels and 224 luxury condominiums – The Ritz Carlton Residences at L.A. LIVE – all in a single tower); the state-of-the-art Regal Cinemas L.A. LIVE Stadium 14 theatres, "broadcast" facilities for ESPN, a 100,000sf special events deck along with residential and office space all centered around Nokia Plaza L.A. LIVE, a 40,000sf outdoor event space.

SOURCE BET Networks