Today we held our monthly #ticketchat where we discussed mobile ticketing. We were happy with the turnout and were excited to have some new participants.
Our first question during #ticketchat was, “Is your ticketing site mobile? If so, is it an app or a true mobile site?”
@TicketForceSB: TicketForce is a true mobile site. Nothing more irritating then going to a website that isn’t mobile optimized
@FaddenPaul: happy to report Yes . Our customers are benefitting as a result
If you thought paperless ticketing was only used for entertainment purposes such as concerts and festivals, think again. Starting next month, commuters traveling on Stamford, Connecticut’s Metro-North Railroad will have the option to purchase tickets on their smartphones through a special app.
At first, this app will only be offered to railroad employees. Once the trial phase is complete, Metro-North Railroad’s app will be available for download on iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices. Metro-North’s ultimate goal is for the test phase to help create an app that will make travel easier for its passengers as well as secure and reliable.
On June 18th, a New Jersey Assembly committee voted to ban the sale of paperless tickets. New Jersey’s bill specifically prohibits selling paperless tickets which do not allow for the transfer of ownership or require that the original ticket holder must produce identification at the event to enter.
Bill A2258 requires that ticket issuers inform customers on details about tickets such as when and where tickets will go on sale in addition to how many tickets will be reserved for artists, promotions, etc. The bill also bans buying tickets in bulk through a bot or software program to prevent the general public from purchasing tickets.
Major League Baseball is taking some big steps towards paperless ticketing. Sports Business Journal discusses how MLB is launching FanPass, which will switch over all 30 teams to digital ticketing, currently one of the league’s top priorities. MLB is the first major sports league to not only take steps toward digital ticketing, but also creating a prominent, unified brand around the concept.
As of Friday, January 20, the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) has begun their fight against paperless ticketing. The organization presented the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a 71-page white paper created by James D. Hurwitz.
The document’s message was evident: the government needs to sponsor an investigation into restrictive paperless tickets. The paper further details that paperless tickets may, in fact, violate federal and state consumer protection and antitrust laws. In addition, the transfer restraints on paperless tickets “unjustifiably limit consumer choice and depart from bedrock competitive market principles.”
Although paperless ticketing may provide convenience as well as protection for consumers, it may also inhibit consumers. For instance, if a consumer wishes to gift or resell their tickets, this process becomes rather inconvenient and complex. Continue reading
How often do you purchase a ticket and see a long block of text in conveniently small writing? What exactly is in this “fine print”?
Back in December, an article came out from the NY Daily News titled, “Shoppers warned on buying tickets as holiday gifts.” The article discusses that the fine print on tickets purchased should be read and understood by the purchaser. Continue reading
Some season ticket holders seem ready to rebel. A recent survey by the Fan Freedom Project (FFP) revealed that 58% of participants were less likely to renew their season packages if the team changed to a limiting, non-transferable ticketing policy. A resounding 86% of fans surveyed see tickets as their property.
Restrictive paperless tickets require purchasers to swipe their credit cards at the entrance of a venue to gain admittance. This makes gifting/transferring tickets a hassle, especially because ticketing agencies only allow you to use their websites to do so, cutting off any third party providers. Continue reading
Paperless ticketing – it seems as if this is the ticketing debate of the year. The TicketForce team came across an article in Variety this past weekend discussing ticket organizations and their struggle with paperless tickets.
Paperless ticketing is a multibillion dollar secondary ticket market in which tickets are sold in digital form. In order to use the ticket, a patron must physically go to the venue, show the credit card that was used to purchase to digital ticket and show their ID to prove their name matches the name on the ticket. The ways around this process, if patrons want to resell their ticket, are scarce. Continue reading
For years, tickets to events have been purchased and re-sold in what is commonly referred to as the secondary market in the ticketing world. Even before the days of Craigslist and StubHub, websites that make it easy to unload extra tickets that the original purchaser cannot use, or wants to make a few bucks from, people have been scalping tickets on the streets and outside of venues for decades.
Of course, the primary market (the artist, the venue and the ticketing company) sometimes feel squeezed by the secondary market because it not only cuts them out of potential revenues (both from the ticket being resold and from more people purchasing tickets directly from them), but it also doesn’t allow them to control ticket prices, so fans may not be able to reasonably afford to attend that event.
That’s where paperless ticketing comes in. Some primary market ticketing companies like Ticketmaster, have started using restrictive paperless ticketing more and more to take the secondary market out of the equation, in some cases. Continue reading
