Do you live in Miami but not have a smart phone? Well, don’t plan on going to any Heat games soon.
According to ESPN, the Heat will only be accepting mobile tickets this year, purportedly to cut down on fraud. That will mean quite the change for fans, who will need a compatible device and won’t be able to transfer tickets to the secondary market quite as easily.
In a statement, the Heat said they decided to adopt the system after finding that roughly one in three fans entered with a mobile ticket last season. The ticket on the phone is still transferable.
Teams are gradually shifting to mobile tickets, they say, in part to reduce fraud, but also to get valuable information about the fan who actually winds up in a specific seat.
Critics of the shift to mobile-only cite lack of ease with transferability and wanting to have a physical keepsake from the game.
While tickets might technically be transferable on the secondary market, it will certainly be much tougher to sell them. Not everyone has a smart phone, which limits the market a bit, and scalping outside the arena will likely decrease dramatically, if it is even allowed at all.
It’s also unclear how much fraud is actually reduced by mobile tickets. Some teams claim the concept has helped them reduce fraud, but solid data is not yet available.
Regardless, this is clearly the way the future is headed, and it’s likely many teams will follow the Heat’s lead in the near future. The way we currently shop, and scalp, for sports tickets is about to change.
