> I remember a time when printable tickets were ubiquitous. One could print off tickets after buying them online or even (gasp) in-person, and bring these paper tickets to get entry into the event when you arrive
I go to 1-2 concerts a month so I'm well aware of how scummy TM is, but the problem with PDF tickets is that people sell fakes or sell the same ticket multiple times. I know multiple people who've been scammed this way. I get not wanting to use your phone for everything, but the changing barcode isn't just technology for the sake of technology, it's actually there to solve a problem.
> PDF tickets work even if your phone loses internet connection
So do the digital barcodes if you add them to your phones wallet.
TM even sends you an email before every event that says:
>> If you haven't already, download the Ticketmaster app or sign into your Ticketmaster account via mobile web. From My Events, tap view then add tickets to your phone's wallet for easy access at entry.
>> We encourage you to download your tickets to your digital wallet before you leave for your event. This ensures that you can always access your tickets.
> If you bought the ticket off the event’s official ticketing agency (not a sketchy reseller), you know for sure that they’re real.
The problem is that that isn't how the real world works. Ignoring the massive scalping problem currently happening (that TM is complicit in) sometimes plans change or people learn about events after the initial sale. Personally, any time I have to buy or sell through a reseller, I use StubHub, but I know plenty of people who don't want to use them as they charge high fees and they aren't much better than TM from a moral stand point.
Also, I get the impression that if TM locked all tickets so that they could only be resold on TM, the author of this article would have a problem with that.
I found the article really interesting from a tech perspective.
And I have no love for TicketMaster, but the migration from paper/PDF tickets to scannable changing QR codes is inevitable, precisely to combat scammers.
TicketMaster does a lot of bad things, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. And learning to download the digital tickets in advance -- either to the app or your Apple wallet -- is just a thing you learn to do, the same way you learn to download a bunch of podcasts before your airline flight that charges for (or doesn't have) WiFi. (And if your ticket was a PDF, you'd similarly be stuck if you couldn't get internet at the venue and hadn't downloaded it in advance.)
>So do the digital barcodes if you add them to your phones wallet.
??? Last I heard the adding the barcode to the phone's wallet did not work, or at least not reliably. Some older folks I know struggled with it, and I specifically help setup the ticket master app and download the barcode. They mentioned that the app eventually logged them off when they got on site and had to struggle with poor wifi. Eventually got it to work but IIRC it took several minutes before they had a stable enough connection for it.
Does it need an actually Google/Apple wallet or something setup?
I go to 1-2 concerts a month so I'm well aware of how scummy TM is, but the problem with PDF tickets is that people sell fakes or sell the same ticket multiple times. I know multiple people who've been scammed this way. I get not wanting to use your phone for everything, but the changing barcode isn't just technology for the sake of technology, it's actually there to solve a problem.
> PDF tickets work even if your phone loses internet connection
So do the digital barcodes if you add them to your phones wallet.
TM even sends you an email before every event that says:
>> If you haven't already, download the Ticketmaster app or sign into your Ticketmaster account via mobile web. From My Events, tap view then add tickets to your phone's wallet for easy access at entry.
TM's help page for the Mobile Entry tickets also says (https://help.ticketmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/978659778561...)
>> We encourage you to download your tickets to your digital wallet before you leave for your event. This ensures that you can always access your tickets.
> If you bought the ticket off the event’s official ticketing agency (not a sketchy reseller), you know for sure that they’re real.
The problem is that that isn't how the real world works. Ignoring the massive scalping problem currently happening (that TM is complicit in) sometimes plans change or people learn about events after the initial sale. Personally, any time I have to buy or sell through a reseller, I use StubHub, but I know plenty of people who don't want to use them as they charge high fees and they aren't much better than TM from a moral stand point.
Also, I get the impression that if TM locked all tickets so that they could only be resold on TM, the author of this article would have a problem with that.