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Philadelphia Flyers, Sixers considering a move to paperless season tickets
Tue, Oct 20th 2009 4:38 pm EST
By Petrina Crockford
Comcast-Spectacor, owner of Phildelphia's Wachovia Center and the Flyers and Sixers, is looking to follow in the footsteps of teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers by considering switching to paperless season tickets. Under this system, season ticket holders would simply present the credit card used for purchase or an ID at the entrance gate; an attendant scans the card and pulls up the ticket data, allowing the fan easy entry without the hassle of paper tickets.
Representatives from Comcast-Spectacor traveled recently to Cleveland to see the Cavaliers' paperless system in action. The Cavaliers began using paperless season tickets in 2006. The Cavaliers' paperless system runs on the Veritix Flash Seats digital platform, and in 2009 Veritix took over both primary and secondary ticketing services for the Cavaliers. Now fans both buy and resell their tickets in one officially sanctioned marketplace. According to Veritix, Cavaliers season ticket holders gave the platform a 98 percent approval rating.
"It is very interesting," Spectacor president and COO Peter Luukko told the Philadelphia Daily News. "We like it and it makes sense. It is something that we are exploring."
Comcast-Spectacor already has some experience with paperless ticketing. The company owns their own in-house ticketing company, New Era Tickets. The subsidiary handled the paperless ticketing for several Miley Cyrus shows this past summer, including one at the Wachovia Center in November.
The use of paperless tickets is partly to combat ticket scalping by eliminating the physical tickets, and that is much of its appeal for companies like Ticketmaster, which chose paperless tickets for the Cyrus tour and for the floor seats of the Bruce Springsteen tour. Cutting out the scalpers is also appealing to Peter Luukko and Comcast-Spectacor, but at the same time it also makes transferability difficult for fans, and it also thwarts people from paying cash for tickets at a venue's box office.
"We have always been against scalping," Luukko said, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. "Anything we can do to hinder scalping, we're all for that."
"Ticketholders would still have the ability to assign tickets to someone else on the Web site if they are looking to unload a few games. That would create a secondary market on our Web site that allows fans to purchase tickets," he added.
Comcast-Spectacor has not given details about a proposed paperless ticket scheme, nor did the company respond to requests for comment by TicketNews.
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Comments represent the opinions of users and do not necessarily reflect the views of TicketNews.The Cavaliers try to prevent ticket resale by using the paperless ticketing system, and they also do not sell season ticket packages to those who do not live in Ohio. I'd like to see their attitude when LeBron says goodbye and ends up in New York.
The same goes for the Flyers. Now that they have a decent team, they talk high and mighty. When they become a crappy team like they were for the entire 1990s, I'd like to see their policy on ticket resale. Without ticket resellers, they'll choke.
Teams like these have forgotten the old days when their teams sucked. When they drive resellers away, they'll be begging them to come back when free agency rips their teams apart.
I have a friend who has been a Flyers season ticket holder for years. Mostly he goes with his son and sits with the same folks he has always sat next to. He misses about 4-5 games a season and he usually gives away his tickets to friends or family. With a paperless season ticket you can't even do that!
So guess what? That is a pair of season tickets that won't get renewed by a fan who gives away his tickets to some games. He doesn't want to re-sell the games he can't go to-why should he give commissions to the Flyers and TM?
When you are selling 40-50 game season tickets, you should be cutting the STH a lot of slack. STH are the bread and butter of attendence, you lose those regulars who have sat in the same seats for years then you lose them for good. Very few STH manage to attend every game, and if a STH wants to cash in for a few games or give away tickets that should be entirely up to them. I have season tickets for the Lakers-which I share with a friend. If the Lakers pull this, then I will pull my business from any team.
It makes me sick seeing these assholes continue to play to the fans by standing up against scalping even though their ultimate goal is to profit from it themselves. Regular fans just eat it up because they have no clue how the secondary market works and what these CEOs are trying to do.
comcast is a bunch of scalpers themselves. they play it like its for the fans BUT when they let u use their resale site u cant sell for under face which is against tje fans best interests. often i sell my flyers tickets which i pay 79.00with a 96.00 face value under face as the market dictates such. plus if u want to email the tickets u have ot pay almost 10.00 for a pait with all the email fee & handling fees. this is all about comcast being a scalper as they would profit more plus they save printing costs. THIS IS a bottom line decision and id cancel ALL MY FLYERS TICKETS AFTER being a 10 yr season ticket holder.
Funny how Luuko says he's "against scalping" but they are all for creating "a secondary market on [their] website." So, basically, it's just the typical double standard of the primary market...you're against a secondary market unless you can profit off it. So there's nothing evil about the secondary market, like guys like Luuko and Azoff claim, other than the fact that people other than them may make a few bucks. Oh, and if anyone read the Daily News article on this a week or two ago, the majority of the fan sentiment was NEGATIVE towards a paperless move.
I am curious to see how the paperless move in Houston will play out this year. The reason that paperless has worked for the Cavs, Hannah Montana, and even Springsteen is because they were high demand events and the ticket vendor could afford to require inconvenient delivery options. However, factor in that the Rockets were in the bottom half of NBA attendance last year (and with no Yao for the season and half a season of no McGrady), and that the 76ers were in the bottom third, and it doesn't seem reasonable to create more obstacles to increasing ticket sales. No matter what Luuko or anyone else says, paperless tickets are not some sort of benefit to the fan and instituting them may be nothing more than a way to increase revenues by controlling the secondary market for your tickets, but don't be surprised when the Rockets attendance sags further, and ditto for the 76ers and Flyers should they go paperless.
These owners and people like Ticketmaster think that they should own tickets even after they sell them. They try to paint themselves as good guys, but there isn't enough paint to go around. Not many ways to decide out and out greed.
What does Luuko mean by scalping? I think that he's referring to people standing outside the venue holding up there hand and saying "tickets here, tickets here!". I don't think he's referring to legitimate brokers and legitimate resales. I also think he left that intentionally vague. And, don't worry season ticket holders, they'll still give you the ability to transfer the tickets - although there may be a charge.
If he's merely referring to street scalpers, then all they need to do is modify the city ordinances. I'm sure, like most cities, they have a law prohibiting re-selling by anyone other than team officials within a certain distance to the arena. If it's still an issue, just lobby the city to extend the distance limit in the ordinance. However, I don't think that's only what he meant. It's obvious by his comments and the method of ticketing they are considering that they are looking to remove resale from anyone other than themselves.
As for the transferring, you're right. The Flyers/Sixers use Paciolan, which has the most expensive ticket transfer fees around. The Mets also use this system, and the cost of transferring a pair of tickets via email is $ 8 - $ 4 paid by the transferring party, and another $ 4 paid by the recipient. USC also uses it and it costs $ 10 to transfer a pair of tickets through their system.
So imagine you're a season ticket holder...basically ANY game you can't attend, your choices are to either a) sell them on the Flyers/Sixers website, or, if b) you are giving them to a buddy, pay an extra $ 8-10 a game to get them to him. If I were a season ticket holder, I would be outraged. What about the guys who split their season tickets? Now they have to pay an extra $ 8-10 per game just to get the other guys their games? That's a scam. At least with paper tickets there is no cost to transfer them, you can just meet with someone and give them the paper tickets for that game. Of course, the Flyers/Sixers don't profit off such a transfer (and why should they?). Increased revenue under the false promise of a better service to season ticket holders and fans is the real issue here, not some BS 'war on scalping'. Reminds me why I hate all Philly teams.