3 Ways to Do Paperless Ticketing for Live Shows

Today, Ticketmaster announced that it will make a form of paperless ticketing available for the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour (or is it the Hannah Montana tour?  I’m so confused because I grew up in a time when the rockstars alternate personalities were between them and their therapists…)

Anyway, the system that will be used, and the first way to do paperless, is like this:

You buy a Miley Cyrus ticket and in order to get into the venue, you’ll need to swipe the purchasing credit card at the turnstile.  This will allow the number of people you’ve bought tickets for to pass through the turnstile.  You bought four tickets, three people can follow you through the gates.

That’s one way to do paperless, and it has one significant advantage, at least from Ticketmaster and the venue’s point of view: it makes it really hard for the secondary market to exist.

From the customer’s point of view, there are not really any advantages in terms of the experience in the venue, but proponents of this kind of system will say that the customer benefits by eliminating scalpers, thus keeping prices lower.

The disadvantages to the consumer are several:  first, you can’t sell or even give away your tickets, unless you want to hand over your credit card to the person for the night.  Second, if you leave your credit card home, or if, say, you used your husband’s credit card, you’ll have a problem.  Third, you’ll need your whole party to be with you as you pass through the turnstiles, or you’ll have to wait until they get there.

In some cases, none of these is a big deal, but in other cases, it’s downright annoying.  Have you ever had tickets to something and knew you couldn’t make it and so you gave your tickets to someone else because you’d rather they get used than wasted?  Well, you can’t really do that under this system.

Ok, that’s one way to do paperless.  The second way is will-call only.  That would mean everybody lines up at will-call, shows ID, and then passes through a gate either after receiving a printed bar code (or ticket) or is simply let straight in.

Advantages: still keeps a tight leash on scalping, and it’s conceivably more flexible on letting people change the name under which the ticket can be picked up.

Disadvantages: significant problems with lines could ensue.  (BTW, this is the way Goldstar currently runs, but we rarely represent more than 15 or 20% of the house, so it doesn’t create the issues that would be created if 100% of the house were done this way.)

In time, paperless ticketing will need to be done the third way if it is going to be done at all, which is by using portable bar codes.  This means that you’ll receive a bar code that works as many times as the number of tickets you’ve bought.  It can be printed or passed around by mobile phone and email.

The advantages here are obvious: tickets no longer needed, but admission to shows can be shared and moved around.

The disadvantage is that it doesn’t help much to stop scalping, but here’s the thing: in this case, you can either help the consumer experience with paperless ticketing or you can stop scalping.

You can’t do both.  At least not with the same tactic.  If the venues want to prevent scalping, this is the wrong way to try to do it, which is at the expense of the customer.

Have you ever seen a sign in a restaurant or shop that says something like “If I don’t give you a receipt, your meal is free”?  If you ever see that sign, I want you to look at it and read the small print that’s invisibly written underneath it.

It says, “We have an internal problem in our business and we can’t solve it, so we’re making it your problem.”  Doing paperless to prevent scalping is basically the same thing.

I spoke before about how this harms the value of the ticket, but more than that, it creates another source of customer animosity that our industry doesn’t need.  Instead, let’s put on the white hat and move to a true paperless system that puts the customer first.