Ticketmaster Sport is rolling out its away ticketing digital technology across English football following a successful trial.
The system seeks to overcome some of the challenges that have traditionally complicated away match ticketing for both the home and visiting clubs and their supporters. Home teams can now offer fully digital tickets for all fans and save time and resource. Away teams no longer need to worry about fulfilment and return of physical stock and each club can turn on mobile wallets.
The technology was trialled at three Lincoln City games and is now being expanded across more and more clubs throughout the English Football League and beyond.
“Away digital ticketing makes venues 100% digital. Home teams will no longer have to print thousands of tickets for away fans and send them on in the post,” said Michael Hardware, client account manager at Ticketmaster Sport.
Lincoln used the technology for League One games at Oxford United and Peterborough and a home friendly against Blackburn Rovers.
Rob Noble, head of supporters’ services at Lincoln, said: “It worked perfectly well and saved us the time and money of batch printing tickets and posting them to Blackburn in advance. On the day we had no issues whatsoever with entry, it ran like clockwork and away supporters ordered tickets and gained entry with digital and e-tickets as they usually would at a home game.”
Chris Brewer, head of ticketing at Peterborough, said: “This has to be the way forward for selling away tickets. It saves time, money and labour while also making it easier for the supporter purchasing the tickets. There was no need to print thousands of tickets in advance, we had no duplicate tickets at all to deal with and absolutely no collections.”