Madonna at the Haçienda to Obama’s inauguration: the tickets we can’t bear to throw away

As QR codes take over, Guardian writers and readers share their prized paper stubs – including the Beatles at Shea Stadium and the Nirvana gig that never was

[www.theguardian.com]

This never happened with paper tickets.

Mobile-Only Tickets Wreak Havoc on Elton John Show in Indiana

[www.ticketnews.com]

A shift to mobile-only ticketing and venue layout changes caused chaos at a long-delayed Elton John concert last weekend in Indiana. Fans heading in to the venue for the show, which had been delayed for over two years by the pandemic, encountered long lines to get in, with some finding their seats had relocated or eliminated altogether and others not getting in at all.

Friday’s show at Gainbridge Fieldhouse was initially scheduled for October 2019, then pushed to March of 2020. COVID put it on ice for another two years, but the show was finally on for the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. But the excitement of catching one of the legendary singer’s final performances quickly turned sour for thousands.

“They scanned our tickets, and we went up to our seats and the row of seats we were in had been eliminated,” Jennifer & Brian Simpson told Indianapolis’ WRTV. “They ended up giving us new tickets, we go back to where the new seats were at and they were already taken.”

“We got here before the concert started and were told our tickets from 2018 which had been renewed multiple times now were not valid,” says another concertgoer Emily Carlisle, who also posted video of the chaos at the box office where hundreds of others awaited information on why their tickets weren’t working or their seats were changed. We waited for an hour and a half talking to multiple people who couldn’t help us. We were just given four tickets that are nowhere near the quality of the original ones purchased to compensate. We got no warning this would happen, no email, no nothing.”


The culprit in the issues was apparently the forced shift to mobile-only ticketing in the three years since the concert was initially scheduled and sold. That, plus venue reconfigurations that removed or relocated some sections of seats, meant that some tickets that were otherwise valid had been invalidated and would not scan at the gate, while other valid and scanned tickets turned out to be for seats that no longer existed.

“We sold these tickets at a time when we were still using paper tickets which now we are all digital this is part of the impetus behind using all digital tickets,” said Danny Lopez Vice President of Corporate Communications for Gainbridge Fieldhouse. “This was the last show that we had that had been rescheduled that was sold under a different seating manifest a different seating chart.”

That led to massive numbers waiting in line at the box office for long periods of time, all the while the concert began on the other side of the entry gates.

“They were telling everyone to go line up at the box office and they had two people working the box office. And there were probably over a thousand people in line,” says Heather Lawalin, who purchased tickets directly through the box office. “We made the decision to leave because the line wasn’t moving and there were a lot of angry people there. At that point it was a security issue for us.”


This isn’t the first time mobile-only tickets have been to blame when huge issues locked people out of an event. Traditionally, they have been due to system issues as the event time drew closer, such as the College Football Playoff in 2018, as and a multi-event outage in 2017. Even the Super Bowl was impacted this year, with a Ticketmaster outage shutting down the pregame ticket market in Los Angeles. The Ticketmaster “safetix” system has also been employed to lock people out of events deliberately, in the interest of locking out potential competition from resale marketplaces.

Naturally, the Gainbridge Fieldhouse explanation sought to shift blame to ticket resale, as they claimed “several” printed tickets that consumers purchased on the secondary market were “counterfeit” which caused part of the massive line. But they also admitted to deliberately avoiding sending mass communication to consumers before the event about any potential issues with the originally-issued tickets, or tickets that may have changed location due to the venue renovations that took place.

“We’ve been talking pretty regularly for the last couple of years about the Fieldhouse of the Future renovations and how different events are impacted in different ways,” Lopez said in a statement. “However, for this one specifically, we had to make the call, since the overwhelming majority of ticket purchases were not impacted, to not raise a flood of confusion from the broader group. We opted instead to be more direct in our communications, with the exception of messages on social media.”

Regardless, hundreds if not thousands of fans walked away from Friday’s Elton John concert angry, having dealt with major headaches, long lines, and possibly missed part or all of a concert they had been waiting as long as three and a half years for.

“As far as I am concerned it’s more than them refunding money, they need to send us somewhere else that he is having a concert,” said Jennifer Simpson.

Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour is in its final run of shows in the United States this year, with many concerts rescheduled from 2020. Hopefully for those attending future concerts, these ticketing issues will be a one-off rather than a recurring theme. Details about the ongoing tour and ticket purchase options are below.

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DeanGoodman
^ Not sure it's a good idea to post your barcode. There are probably multiple copies of your ticket being printed off right now.

They already have their ticket for 2050

I hate not having tickets. For the Stones and Pearl Jam at Hyde Park, I went to the box office and said I had a problem with the app on my phone. Tickets printed. Problem solved.

There are good and bad points to e-tickets. However, the main benefit to everyone (except the scalpers) is that it massively reduces the ability of criminals to profiteer off the secondary ticket selling market with massive inflated prices. The technology allows the tickets to be tracked from original purchase through to transfer and use so suspicious behaviour can be clamped down on more easily.

Of course, scalpers will always find a way so it's not a silver bullet, but the e-ticket solution was heralded as an anti-scalper measure about a decade ago.

I always worry though about e-tickets. What if I run out of battery? What if I drop my phone? I guess as long as there are back-up measures in place (such as maintaining physical tickets as the exception rather than the rule, and having staff able to assist when the technology fails for whatever reason) then the pros outweigh the cons.

Ecology happened. I hope no more paper tickets soon.

Lucky Dips paper tickets....Thank God I hate E-tickets.....Have a nice day.peace.M

I remember when I got my Twickenham tix in the mail for the 2nd show there of the ABB tour.......I was amazed at how beautiful the tickets were. Colorful and much, much larger than tix here in the US. Even the ones on this tour are nice. I really like the multi-colored tongue. It might be one of my favorite designs they've done of it.

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sjs12
However, the main benefit to everyone (except the scalpers) is that it massively reduces the ability of criminals to profiteer off the secondary ticket selling market with massive inflated prices.

Yes, now only Ticketmaster/OEtickets etc can do that. Scalping hasn't gone away, it's just been made legitimate.

syrel

PS - think it's interesting that Germany seem to be the last major market to give up paper tickets, as they were the last ones to stop buying CDs too (except maybe Japan...)