The future of ticket sales
So my Diamondbacks are getting throttled (shout out to College Ave.) by the Yankees for the third day in a row, so I’ve been looking to occupy myself with other activities for the past hour or so. Then I remembered a conversation I had with my academic adviser earlier today.
My adviser, Ellen Staurowsky, also happens to be a sports fanatic. We often spend much of our time discussing games, news, and any other events in the sports world. Today, we chatted about whether or not the Cavaliers would be able to extend the (so far) depressing NBA Finals. I brought up the issue of television ratings - which if you read this blog you know this it’s an issue I take dear to heart - and how the ratings have dropped with each game. I believe I said: “Where are the American sports fans?”
Dr. Staurowsky followed that up with an interesting fact. She said that she had visited cavs.flashseats.com earlier this morning, and found hundreds of tickets for tonight’s game still for sale. There were even pairs - PAIRS - of tickets being sold for a little over $100. That’s cheaper than a lot of regular season games. And this is the NBA Finals. But I was more interested in the actual website than the ticket sales, as they hardly surprised me.
Cavs.flashseats.com is a new innovative website that allows fans to purchase tickets directly online, with no need of an actual paper ticket. From their “About” section:
Flash Seats’ paperless ticketing does just that – it eliminates paper tickets. Fans swipe any form of electronic ID (credit card, driver’s license, etc.) at the gate and then enter the arena. No lost or stolen tickets. It’s really fast!
Besides buying tickets, you can also sell and transfer them on the website. Essentially, as Dr. Staurowsky explained to me, the Cavs are trying to make back some of the money they have traditionally lost to ticket scalpers. What this website is doing is taking scalpers off the streets outside of the arena, and putting them in an online network. And since the website is through the team, they can monitor all sales, transfers, etc.
This seems like a pretty ingenious idea to me, and is one that is surely going to grow in popularity over the next few years. Within the next decade we could see all professional sports teams operating ticket sales this way.
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