Those looking to attend a game in Wrigley Field to watch the defending World Series champion Chicago Cubs will have one less option to get hands on tickets in 2017. The option to purchase a ticket online and have the ability to immediately print the tickets at home or at the office is no longer available for Cubs games. Instead, fans will have to get their hands on a ticket directly from the box office or load up Major League Baseball’s official Ballpark app and have your ticket loaded into your account.
The New York Yankees made the same move last season and we should probably expect this to become the norm rather quickly around the league. This is done primarily for security purposes, or so we’re told. The real reason may be because teams are more and more becoming allied partners with specific ticket vendors and locking out options for third-party ticket resellers like StubHub.
These multi-billion companies franchises are always going to be more concerned about other vendors profiting off their product without receiving a cut of the pie, so preventing any methods for those vendors to have access to tickets to games is a smart and logical business move from the standpoint of the Yankees and Cubs.
Fans using the mobile app also gives the Cubs and other MLB franchises direct inside access to how fans are using the app during a game. Users of the app can order food, and personal information about the fans is documented by MLB. It all comes down to getting to know you better, so they can market to you better.
“Hopefully we can use that to then customize our communications with fans, if we have a better insight into their buying habits,” Cubs Vice President of Sales and Marketing Colin Faulkner said in an article by Crain’s Chicago Business. “All fans are different, and we want to make sure we’re sending them the right communications, the right information.”
Now, maybe you are like me and see this as a good thing. Ink is expensive, after all, and the environmentalists out there will be happy to see that paper is not going to be wasted any more. But the whole convenience factor is a big deal for a number of fans out there. Printing a ticket at home eliminates the need to get to the stadium and stand in a line at the box office to pick up your ticket or use an ATM-like ticket distribution kiosk outside the stadium. The times are changing though, and getting a paper jam at home when you need your ticket is no longer a catastrophe waiting to happen.
