So long ticket scalpers… not really. At least not yet but I can see this maybe putting a gigantic dent in that business. Major League Baseball, in 5 Cities is utilizing a mobile phone ticketing service to deliver tickets to those fans that purchased their tickets via the Teams web site. Basically, the Team will deliver a message to your phone that contains a barcode which will be scanned at the gate.
Here’s why I think it crushes ticket scalpers if this model is adopted on a large scale. From the Mobile Ticket Terms and Conditions is this little nugget.
The purchaser agrees not to forward the Tickets@Phone message to a third party. Doing so will invalidate the ticket without the right to a refund.
Ouch! Unless of course you’re willing to sell the buyer the phone along with the ticket.
The Kansas City Royals are the latest team to adopt this new mobile marketing strategy. Here’s their Mobile Ticket Delivery page. The Kansas City Business Journal also covered this.
This is brilliant idea and if widely adopted it could prove to be a huge money saver. No ticket printing or human cashiers are required to make this transaction. I’ve already covered SMS message cost in several posts. Considering it’s MLB, they’re probably paying close to .05 on the ticket/bar code delivery. Compare that to cost of printing a ticket and staffing an office to handle the ticket transactions and I think you’ll see what I’m seeing.
