The future is here, and there will be fewer ticket stubs to keep as mementos.
The San Antonio Spurs will usher their season ticket holders into the future of sports ticketing this season with the introduction of smart cards with all holder games banked on the card, replacing ticket books that included individual tickets for every game.
The move is certainly one that makes the franchise more green, but a nod is in order for the idea of reducing clutter and making entrance to games a more seamless process.
The Spurs made it simple for their season ticket holders to decide, allowing them to choose whether they'd prefer their 33 games to be stored on the smart card or to come in the traditional ticket book. If chosen, the card will be scanned at the gate at the AT&T Center prior to each tipoff and will record what games the holder has and hasn't been to.
Something is obviously lost in the choice to stop receiving ticket booklets. On a more sentimental level, the anticipation and excitement of waiting for and then receiving the booklet goes out the window a bit for holders. Nostalgia and sentimentality are going the way of wasted paper in the transaction, which to us seems like a fair trade.
The other obstacle is selling tickets for games the holder cannot attend. If it's someone the seller knows, then lending the card for a night isn't a big deal. But as Larry Brown Sports points out, the lack of tickets complicates selling them off to strangers for a night. A loss for the holder, but a win for the franchise, which wrestles some control over their ticket distribution in the process.
The move is largely a positive for the franchise, which also saves in the ballpark of $50,000 with fewer printed tickets, and only presents one small problem for the holder. Seems like a win-win to us, and a sign of things to come from other franchises in the future.
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