Mobile Ticketing

Your favorite band is in town for its final reunion tour. The
tickets are available online, but the concert is only two
days away! In the past, if you wanted to get the tickets on
time, you'd have to pay an exorbitant delivery fee, wait in
a long line at will call or put your fate in the hands of
a scalper.

Not any more. A new technology called mobile ticketing
delivers tickets right to your cell phone. You don't even
have to print them out. The tickets arrive as a text message
with a special barcode. When you show up at the event,
they'll scan the barcode, and you're in the door!

In this post, we'll run through the basics of how mobile
ticketing works and explain some of the features and
applications of this exciting new service.

Here's how to buy and use mobile tickets for an event:

1. Buy your ticket online and choose "mobile ticketing" as
your delivery option.

2. Enter your cell phone number, mobile carrier and cell
phone model.

3. After completing the transaction, you'll receive a text
message on your phone. If your phone is MMS or WAP enabled ,
the message includes an image with a barcode. If your phone
only accepts text messages, you'll receive a special
alphanumeric code that can be manually entered at the event.

4. Do not delete the text message. Save it or leave it in
your inbox. This message is now your ticket.

5. When you arrive at the event, open the text message and
hand your phone to the ticket collectors at the gate. Since
mobile ticketing is a relatively new technology, the venue
might require that you enter through a specific gate or door
that's equipped with the right barcode reader. If for some
reason the barcode is unreadable or your phone doesn't accept
images, they'll have to enter the barcode digits manually.

6. Some events will print out a paper ticket at the gate
while others forgo the paper version entirely.

Features and Applications of Mobile Ticketing

Mobile tickets have the potential to be used wherever regular
tickets are sold today. Many modern sports and concert
facilities already use barcode readers to process paper
tickets, so the technology is already in place. The reach of
mobile ticketing could extend to sporting events, concerts,
movie theaters, nightclubs, transportation, conferences and
more.

Guns N' Roses played the first official "ticketless" concert
in London in June 2006 and former Black Eyed Peas frontwoman
Fergie is selling absolutely no paper tickets to her 2007
Verizon VIP Tour.

Tickets.com has launched a new service called Tickets@Phone
to deliver tickets to cell phones. Two baseball teams -- the
Washington Nationals and the Oakland A's -- currently use the
Tickets@Phone service to offer mobile ticketing as one of
their delivery options.

The greatest advantage of mobile ticketing is convenience. If
you have a WAP-enabled phone, you can buy the tickets from
your phone, store them on your phone and swipe your phone at
the event. There's no waiting in line at the movies or the
game, not even to pick up your pre-ordered ticket at will
call. Just walk straight to the gate.

Mobile ticketing can also help increase revenue for concert
promoters and ticket vendors. They can sell tickets right up
to the minute that an event starts, because delivery to your
phone is instantaneous. They can even take advantage of
"no-shows," selling unclaimed tickets at the last second to
people who are waiting for seats.

Mobile ticketing reduces processing costs on both sides. The
vendor doesn't pay for printing and delivery fees, and
neither does the customer. Plus, less paper is better for the
environment.

Mobile tickets are harder to scalp than paper tickets, and
extra security measures can be added to make fraud or theft
nearly impossible. The ticket can be "locked" to the
customer's cell phone, so the message can't be forwarded. The
customer's name and even photo can be added to the ticket for
confirmation at the door.

Even if a mobile ticket is lost or the text message is
accidentally deleted, it's easy for the vendor to cancel the
old ticket and resend a replacement.

For now, mobile ticketing is just getting started, but it
promises to be an exciting new convenience for cell phone
users everywhere.