Taking its fight against the secondary ticket market one step further, the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, SC, is requiring more than just a swipe of a credit card to attend Bruce Springsteen’s paperless ticketing show tonight, September 16.
Fans who bought paperless tickets to the show – which had not sold out as of earlier today, according to the center – must bring a photo ID along with the credit card they used to buy the tickets in order to gain entry. All future paperless ticket shows at the center will have the same requirement.
According to Susan Quinn, director of marketing for the Bi-Lo Center, the venue and its paperless ticketing system will prohibit ticket brokers from going to show to scan in their customers, even if they have a valid ID and credit card.
“That’s the whole reason for implementing the system,” she told TicketNews. “This allows for true fans to actually buy good seats and not have to pay exorbitant amounts for them.”
The Springsteen show is the first at the center to utilize Ticketmaster’s paperless ticketing system, and will be implemented on a per-show basis depending on the wishes of the artist. Quinn did not know what other upcoming shows would utilize the system, but she said possibly a future Lynyrd Skynyrd show.
Paperless ticketing has been used for several concerts in recent months, but perhaps its biggest rollout, with the current Miley Cyrus tour, has contributed to slow ticket sales, as some fans have lamented over the logistical challenges, and non-transferability, of paperless tickets.
Quinn said the paperless system is also designed to combat counterfeit tickets, which the venue has also had to fight on occasion in recent years. She said she had not yet heard fan, or broker, reaction to the Springsteen paperless ticketing launch, but she anticipates a “pleased and happy” response from fans. The Bi-Lo Center is just one of many venues that have begun to roll out paperless ticketing systems, which is part of an overall Ticketmaster strategy to fight the ticket resale market, an industry that Ticketmaster itself plays in with its TicketsNow subsidiary and TicketExchange program.
According to TicketNews’s exclusive Ticket Resale Laws compendium, South Carolina prohibits the resale of tickets for more than $1 above face value, but it does allow for online ticket resale for unlimited amounts so long as the reseller guarantees a full refund if an event is cancelled, if entry is denied, or if tickets are not delivered on time.
(The image accompanying this story is from BruceSpringsteen.net)
