Ticket Broker Blog

The Ticket Broker's Source for the Lastest Ticket Industry News

Archive for category paperless tickets

Miley Cyrus Tour to be all paperless

Jun 5

Posted by mmiller in paperless tickets, sports tickets, stubhub, the eagles, ticketmaster, tom waits

The upcoming Miley Cyrus tour will be all paperless, in response to complains because of her her last tour being one of most sought after tickets in years, and also one of the highest priced tickets on the secondary market. Paperless ticketing means no actual tickets are issued and the buyer must attend the show, and bring their photo ID and the credit card issued. This will be the first ALL paperless tour at a scale this large. Tom Waits was the first all paperless tour, but his venues were theaters, not arenas like Miley is playing. AC/DC had the best tickets be paperless for their tour, but the majority of tickets were still standard paper tickets. What does this mean for Mileys tour?

I predict that fans will actually be hurt by paperless ticketing and this could be the last time it is used at a show like this for the following reasons:

  • Given the age group of her fans (tweens), how many have their own credit card to scan at the show? Does this mean parents will have to goto the show, too, even if they don’t want to and be forced to buy another ticket?
  • Ticket brokers will still come up with ways to resell tickets (escorting buyers in, anyone?).
  • The arenas will still sell out, and many fans will still be without tickets, however the secondary market will have a much smaller supply due to the paperless ticketing, driving prices sky high.  In the end, the same moms who were complaining about all the ticket brokers reselling Miley tickets last tour will now be wishing they would come back so her daughter could get in for under $1000/ticket.

With all the current legislation in the works for the ticket industry, I  wouldn’t be surprised if anti paperless ticketing legislation was drafted because people complain they can’t resell their tickets if they end up having to work, and because they have to buy an extra ticket for the parent even if they don’t want to attend.

It will be interesting to see how loudly parents complain and what ticketmaster does in response and what it means for the future of paperless ticketing.

The video that explains paperless ticketing for the Miley tour(an instant classic!):

3 Comments

Paperless Tickets: The Wave Of The Future Or A Bust?

Sep 26

Posted by mmiller in ac/dc, paperless tickets, ticketmaster, tom waits

Earlier this year, Tom Waits became the first artist to use Paperless tickets. AC/DC has followed suit with their upcoming arena tour, and while not all of their tickets are paperless, they did make all fan club tickets paperless, along with most of the premium seats in the venue.

The idea behind paperless tickets is that they cannot be resold because no paper tickets are ever issued, not even at will call. Often times with traditional will-call tickets, a broker will meet the buyer at the venue, pickup the tickets from the will-call window and then hand them off to the buyer. With paperless tickets, the original buyer’s credit card and ID are scanned at the door as they enter, so in theory there is no way to resell or transfer the tickets.

Will this be the wave of the future? No.
Why? Because there are many disadvantages to this:
1) What if someone buys tickets for an event and then something comes up and they cannot go? With paperless tickets, they just have to eat them and they cannot be resold (even for face value).
2) What if someone is meeting a friend at a show and their friend ends up being very late? Since the whole party has to be present to enter, one person might miss part of the show because the other person is late.
3) For a normal event, anyone attending just hands their ticket to the person at the door, the ticket is scanned or ripped and they are let in. With paperless, their credit card has to be swiped and then a receipt has to print out. While this may not sound like a lot more time than traditional tickets, when you multiply it by 20,000 attendees, it could make long lines even longer.
4) I personally attended a Tom Waits paperless ticket show earlier this year and when I got to the door, my credit card was swiped and it kept giving an error, so I was told to goto the customer service line to get my tickets, where I waited for about 20 minutes along with many other people who said “For some reason it didn’t let me in..” Once I got to the front of the line, someone looked up my info and miraculously, my tickets were found and given to me. Obviously, there are some bugs in the system. Are they fixed yet? Will they be?

In my opinion, paperless tickets will never become the norm because of all the above problems, especially the no resale issue. When you take into account that Ticketmaster now owns Ticketsnow, as well as still having their own “Ticketexchange”, they have quite a financial stake in making sure that ticket resale continues to flourish and grow. It is against their best interest to use paperless tickets.

Additionally, ticket brokers will always find a way around things like this. For example, when I attended Tom Waits, I noticed no one’s ID were checked, just credit card scanned. If someone wanted to resell their paperless tickets, they could purchase them with a prepaid credit card, then simply mail the card to the buyer. Simple? Yes. Will it work? Unless they start actively checking ID’s, yes.

1 Comment