Major League Baseball has put a whole lot of effort recently in to continuing to evolve the way fans gain entrance to games. In fact, there is a Commissioner's Ticket Review Committee that was set up for this purpose. They've come up with a paperless ticket brand known as MLB FanPass that will be used by every team in baseball. The degree to which each team will use it remains to be seen.
Sports Business Daily has an in-depth article about the new MLB FanPass initiative which tries to answer just how it would work:
Like systems in other sports, purchasers of paperless baseball tickets
will enter ballparks using their credit card, which is swiped at the
gate. Fans upon arrival then get a locator stub, created using a
portable printer, to help find their seats. For fans, the most immediate
change will be the elimination of a stack of paper tickets that need to
be stored, managed and distributed. And MLB FanPass has been integrated
into the primary ticketing systems of outside vendors such as
Ticketmaster and the MLBAM-owned Tickets.com.
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As a partial season ticket holder and very frequent visitor to Citizens Bank Park, I'm a fan who loves having my ticket stub as a memento from the game. I've even emailed the Phillies in the past asking if there was any way to turn a StubHub ticket that I've printed out at home into a "real" ticket stub to keep as a memento. They responded by saying this printed out piece of paper is, in fact, a ticket stub. Meh.
It's an issue and new technology worth keeping an eye on. Is the "locator stub" mentioned by SBD substantial enough to make for a nice keepsake from a game in which Roy Halladay throws a no hitter? One can hope.
Another local team that implements a paperless ticket is the Philadelphia Union who give full season ticket holders a credit card sized... card that fits right into their wallet and is simply scanned to gain entrance. Some fans put this card in a lanyard and wear it around their neck. The technology also allows them to email printable tickets through their account with the Union to certain games if they wanted to allow a friend to use their season ticket for instance.
Change is weird. We have a certain attachment to actual physical tickets. Do you have an opinion either way?
