Mobile ticking continues to grow in North America. Rogers Wireless, Canada’s top cell phone company, recently announced an exclusive partnership with Live Nation to bring mobile ticketing to concerts in Canada.
Rogers Wireless allows users with cell phones that support WAP 2.0 browsers to enter credit card information and purchase tickets through their phones anywhere within the country. After a successful purchase, the tickets will be sent to the purchaser via SMS and MMS.
When mobile ticket purchasers arrive at the concert, Rogers is promising mobile ticketing users their own VIP entry line. Just show the ticket on the cell phone at the door. Tickets.com, another pioneer in the ticketing field has made use of VIP entrances in the past to try to draw increased mobile ticket use.
The partnership is a win for both companies. Rogers Wireless is able to further expand its efforts to be a content provider to its youth customers. In addition to selling tickets for Live Nation events, Rogers Wireless is sponsoring several Live Nation concerts, and will be allowing its customers to access streaming clips from Live Nation concerts.
For Live Nation, their events are now on the cutting edge of technological innovation, and mobile ticketing will likely play a large role in their ticket sales as they end their contract with Ticketmaster. Starting in 2009, Ticketmaster will no longer be the source of tickets to most of Live Nation’s events. Thus, it is a strong win for Live Nation to be able to begin to expand their ticketing options.
Mobile ticketing is expected to greatly expand over the next two years, as many major service providers like Rogers Wireless begin to offer their service on a trial basis, it should certainly continue to grow in popularity. It increases the ease of access for the customers while allowing ticket vendors to keep their costs low.
