The BBC have released an article about whether or not Digital Tickets will replace paper tickets for concerts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34507548
Now here’s the rub.
I’ve bought tickets online for gigs (the last one notably the Psychostick UK Gig at The Garage), and even though it was a downloadable PDF, I still had to print it out and hand it over at the door. There was even an additional “email handling fee” to buy them too which pissed me off.
It’s been a number of years since I’ve got physical tickets for the cinema, and even though I’ve not flown for over 8 years, there were e-tickets and boarding passes for flights even then. Trains are now e-ticketing, something I’ve not done yet, but will do soonish.
It’s about time venues allow e-tickets. There are a lot of methods to make this secure and available – it’s just for them to embrace them. You could even do your own app and push ads and additional into your face when the tickets bought.
The only drawback here is smaller independent venues (The Unicorn or The Black Heart spring to mind), who probably cannot afford the overhead of this, and paper will still be about for them. There would be nothing stopping them allowing a flash of a PDF on a phone, and then a ticket off a list they have – that would stop ticket fraud from the get go there.
I guess it’s all about trust.
I’ll leave this here, no-one to my knowledge, has successfully got on a plane and flown with a fraudulent e-boarding pass/ticket.
(Photo Baby Godzilla (now called HECK because Japan wanted to sue them) , The Black Heart)