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.