Senior Associate Athletics Director Adam Tschuor said this is the direction the business is going, and in three or four years, a mobile ticket may be the only way fans get into any event across the country.
The NFL moved to mobile ticketing last season. More and more colleges have made the switch in recent months. LSU, Seton Hall, Mississippi State and Arkansas are among the colleges that have announced the move to mobile ticketing in just the last month.
“Since the pandemic, everybody and their brother is making that announcement right now,” said Tschuor.
There are three big reasons UD has made the change.
1. Being flexible: Instead of mailing thousands of printed tickets with dates and times, UD can update dates and times with the click of a button. That will be especially important in the season ahead because there’s still no guarantee the schedule Athletic Director Neil Sullivan and his staff are putting together won’t change because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Being nimble is a big advantage,” Tschuor said. “We don’t know what this season will look like. Even now, we don’t have any idea. Right now we’re planning on everything as is, but being nimble is going to be the most important thing.”
2. Limiting fraud: Tschuor has worked at Dayton since May 2012 and said parking fraud was an issue in his early years on the job. The last two years, especially last season when the Flyers won a school-record 29 games, ticket fraud became a bigger problem.
“We saw a tenfold increase in ticket fraud,” Tschuor said. “Two years ago, we eliminated print-at-home tickets, the same year Ohio State did it with football.”
The tickets printed at home were easy to fake. The new technology allows fans with mobile tickets to tap their phone on an electronic reader. There’s not even a need to scan a barcode as many people are used to doing with boarding passes at airports.
3. Improving safety: The tap-and-go technology will also limit the chance of spreading COVID-19 because fans are no longer handing a ticket to an usher, having it ripped and getting the stub back.
“Tap and go is statistically proven to have less contact in terms of patrons dealing with event staff,” Tschuor said.
Tschuor knows the transition to mobile ticketing will be difficult for some fans and said UD will work with those fans to find a solution.
“We still don’t have the specifics yet, but we’ll come out with a very detailed (press) release here soon,” he said. “For the most part, once people try it, they’ll see it’s a far superior method for going to an event.”
There will also be options for fans who arrive at UD Arena and realize they forgot their phone at home or for fans whose phone batteries have died.
“There will be an ability for us to work on individual basis with people who have bought in and have the app and accessed their tickets,” Tschuor said. “Life happens. There’s going to be a need to get people in the building in another way, so we’ll be able to triage those situations.”
As for parking passes, UD is looking into whether those will also be accessed through a phone.
“There are significantly more hurdles from an execution and technology standpoint outside versus in the venue,” Tschuor said.
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