Digital tickets in the future

[Superscally]

2 hours ago, brettredmayne said:

Do you think Glastonbury will ever move to digital tickets, I would miss having the physical ticket but think it will happen.

Ticketmaster now has QR codes that can't be done by screenshot so the technology is there.

The QR code code have your photo ID on top of it.

Seeing quite a few stories of tickets going missing this year.

Easy fiddle. Liverpool season tickets can't be screenshotted and people get around it using burner (or friends) phones. 

[Superscally]

20 minutes ago, gfa said:

Assuming on average 2 go to each address thats almost £400k in postage alone

Which the punter, not the fest pays for.

[incident]

56 minutes ago, Neil said:

i doubt see will be keen to switch away from physical tickets, cos they'll have staff and and investment in equipment to do that.

See are not the operation they used to be, they've changed along with the rest of the industry.

15-20 years ago, they had a large staff based in Nottingham city centre - dozens of people in the office on the phones, dispatching tickets, etc. Just about everything was done in-house and so sending out 100,000+ tickets was something they could absorb.

These days, it's (relatively speaking) a skeleton staff there. They've downsized to a much smaller office, have a fraction of the number of customer service staff, physical tickets are now a small minority with most ticket dispatch done in collaboration with a logistics partner - at this point Glastonbury is just about the only remaining event that actually does have a high volume of physical tickets in a short time frame so they need to scale up especially for that.

It's been a while since I knew anyone who worked there, but just based on the way they've evolved I'm pretty sure they'd be delighted to take Physical tickets out of the equation entirely - as long as they got exclusivity on the Digital side of course.

[Neil]

1 hour ago, incident said:

See are not the operation they used to be, they've changed along with the rest of the industry.

15-20 years ago, they had a large staff based in Nottingham city centre - dozens of people in the office on the phones, dispatching tickets, etc. Just about everything was done in-house and so sending out 100,000+ tickets was something they could absorb.

These days, it's (relatively speaking) a skeleton staff there. They've downsized to a much smaller office, have a fraction of the number of customer service staff, physical tickets are now a small minority with most ticket dispatch done in collaboration with a logistics partner - at this point Glastonbury is just about the only remaining event that actually does have a high volume of physical tickets in a short time frame so they need to scale up especially for that.

It's been a while since I knew anyone who worked there, but just based on the way they've evolved I'm pretty sure they'd be delighted to take Physical tickets out of the equation entirely - as long as they got exclusivity on the Digital side of course.

Not everything was done in house some of the ticket handling was prison workibelieve

[Suprefan]

7 hours ago, maelzoid said:

Imagine a situation where you can throw your ticket back for a 95% refunds, and it goes to someone else on the waiting list, realistically any time up to a week before the event. All achievable.

I suggested an exchange type system once and even a fee the festival could charge to get some extra income and it was shot down. But  look at where we are now, hilarious.

 

Its very doable to use QR codes to make things much more efficient and to secure them so that your info is on it and still has to match. Besides, why not have SEE offer a souvenir ticket for an extra £5. Some will take it, some wont. But it will be mailed to you after the festival. I had that done with ABBA Voyage last year and it was perfectly fine.

 

But the typical efests reaction is "no!! Technology bad! Keep it old school! Let us have our ticket issues cause we hate convenience!"

 

And I bet there small percentage of punters who dont have smart phones will cause a fuss. Well, sucka for you. You were able to operate a computer to even buy your ticket, best get a mobile now. 
 

OR, for the technically challenged they can go to will call and deal with that if they so choose.

 

better yet, lets fix will call. 5 people helping out a few thousand is terrible. Coachella had 50+ will call windows at their location and the queues moved quickly. 

[Suprefan]

5 hours ago, Superscally said:

Easy fiddle. Liverpool season tickets can't be screenshotted and people get around it using burner (or friends) phones. 

Liverpool isnt checking id's to match tickets and such now are they. if they still tie in your photo which cannot be manipulated thats the extra layer needed here. So then what, we're gonna have somebody hack into the see system and make your photo be changed? As much as fake id's are a thing there isnt somebody thats going to break into a ticketing system to do that. Security will just have to be trained to look at the images on your device and cross check correctly, thats it.

[Memory Man]

8 hours ago, Neil said:

in the past, glasto were scared of a technology failure leading to chaos at the gates.

Could still happen in theory.

they’d need a new pass out system as well as peoples phones may be dead by the sunday for example.

i think its time for digital tickets though. I use football tickets on apple wallet that do not have a forwarding option for example. The QR codes wouldnt have to go live till the morning of gates in theory and a moving QR code prevents people passing on screenshots. Photos also on there and ask ppl to provide ID if necessary. All doable.

[Memory Man]

As previous poster said with the changes at head office, i doubt see are doing much of the printing or mailing of the tickets. The printing will surely be done by a third party and the mailing probably by agency staff and / or by a third party.

Their core business is selling 98% etickets via a website and mobile app. Its not printing and posting physical tickets much anymore. Theres a (big) fee needed when you use third parties etc. There should be a financial incentive to change to digital tickets is what i’m saying.

However the festival will likely resist it for as long as possible as its a fairly large operational change at their end.

Tickets not going missing and reduction of transaction fees from the ridiculous £9.75 (will be over a tenner by next year) is great for punters. Digital tickets reduces that to say £2.75 and the festival can grab an extra £7 per order (say add an average of £3 per ticket to the ticket price) without the price even really going up.

£3 on 170k is half a mil

[Leyrulion]

46 minutes ago, Memory Man said:

Digital tickets reduces that to say £2.75 and the festival can grab an extra £7 per order (say add an average of £3 per ticket to the ticket price) without the price even really going up.

£3 on 170k is half a

 

7 hours ago, Superscally said:

Which the punter, not the fest pays for.

SEE still charge a significant fee. 

This is the point. There will be a time where they might move some of that delivery fee into the main ticket price thereby increasing income whilst keeping the overall price increase that year for the customer down. 

[Superscally]

2 hours ago, Suprefan said:

Liverpool isnt checking id's to match tickets and such now are they. if they still tie in your photo which cannot be manipulated thats the extra layer needed here. So then what, we're gonna have somebody hack into the see system and make your photo be changed? As much as fake id's are a thing there isnt somebody thats going to break into a ticketing system to do that. Security will just have to be trained to look at the images on your device and cross check correctly, thats it.

Will take too much time dude. Seconds more than usual but would add up. Plus chance of tech fail. And infrastructure needed. I hope it could be done if it improves things but reckon too much effort for too little gain?

[Jose Pose]

8 hours ago, gfa said:

Assuming on average 2 go to each address thats almost £400k in postage alone

But we pay £9 for that, so it isn’t costing Glasto anything, if anything it’s a way for them to profit as it stands. 

[Crazyfool01]

I hope not .... i like my Physical ones that ive got hidden away in a drawer somewhere 

[clarkete]

11 hours ago, incident said:

Obviously a festival with 20 entry points across a several mile stretch of farmland and gates running 24/7 for 5 days (actually more like 9 when you factor in staff arrivals) is a much more difficult proposition than any other implementation to date.

All good points, so they need other large events in rural parts of the UK to pilot it first

[DeanoL]

4 hours ago, Suprefan said:

I suggested an exchange type system once and even a fee the festival could charge to get some extra income and it was shot down. But  look at where we are now, hilarious.

Two very different things. There's already a return window, and it works, I don't think anyone could argue that extending it would be a bad thing. It is only when it is now as that's when the tickets have to be printed.

Your suggestion was around being able to pass a ticket on to a *specific person* which is impossible to secure against touting. Being able to return a ticket which then goes into a general pool from which anyone can buy is a very different thing.

[DeanoL]

The infrastructure required is just burying some ethernet cable.

Look, I wouldn't risk doing this on WiFi either, but it's literally just laying 20 cables underground. It's not a piece of cake, but it's not some huge design and infrastructure challenge.

[Cleetus]

10 hours ago, Superscally said:

Easy fiddle. Liverpool season tickets can't be screenshotted and people get around it using burner (or friends) phones. 

The Scottish NHS covid vaccine app was fool proof that way.

Had the live time counting away while changing colours. Basically so screenshots wouldn't work. 

Worked perfectly for getting into those gigs when venues started to open again.

Not sure what England or Wales had.

Anyway basically that with your photo, scannable barcode and that's it sorted. 

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Cleetus

[Leyrulion]

2 hours ago, Superscally said:

Will take too much time dude. Seconds more than usual but would add up. Plus chance of tech fail. And infrastructure needed. I hope it could be done if it improves things but reckon too much effort for too little gain?

I don't know if that's true? 

Scanning an app isn't necessarily going to be longer than handing over the paper ticket, putting it under the UV scanner, seeing the security marks and checking the photo with the person in front of you. 

 

[DeanoL]

Yeah the bottleneck on entry is putting wristbands on, not scanning tickets.

[clarkete]

22 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The infrastructure required is just burying some ethernet cable.

Look, I wouldn't risk doing this on WiFi either, but it's literally just laying 20 cables underground. It's not a piece of cake, but it's not some huge design and infrastructure challenge.

Wait, what? 

[DeanoL]

12 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Wait, what? 

The only thing unreliable is using some sort of wireless transmission. It can get interference from various sources, varying signal strengths so needing repeaters across the site, overloaded by other wireless networks being set up, or even phones, it's hard to do a real stress test as you can't easily simulate the conditions of 200,000 people on site... that's why you wouldn't use it for something over such a large area if you can help it.

But you can wire in. A single ethernet cable is about 10x the bandwidth of the fanciest wireless network. No live current so doesn't have to be buried as deep or shielded in the same way as power cables. You'd need a small (shoebox size) box at every end point/gate as a permanent structure to hold the socket, but then you're sorted.

It's not a *simple* task - you'd still be digging up trenches across a load of farmland to bury the stuff which would be disruptive - but it's not like it's something that's never been done before. Hell, I know a fair few people who have done it from their house to their sheds when they converted them into home offices.

There might also be better options - I don't know if the gates already have power but if so you can just run the lines overhead in the same way.

[clarkete]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The only thing unreliable is using some sort of wireless transmission. It can get interference from various sources, varying signal strengths so needing repeaters across the site, overloaded by other wireless networks being set up, or even phones, it's hard to do a real stress test as you can't easily simulate the conditions of 200,000 people on site... that's why you wouldn't use it for something over such a large area if you can help it.

But you can wire in. A single ethernet cable is about 10x the bandwidth of the fanciest wireless network. No live current so doesn't have to be buried as deep or shielded in the same way as power cables. You'd need a small (shoebox size) box at every end point/gate as a permanent structure to hold the socket, but then you're sorted.

It's not a *simple* task - you'd still be digging up trenches across a load of farmland to bury the stuff which would be disruptive - but it's not like it's something that's never been done before. Hell, I know a fair few people who have done it from their house to their sheds when they converted them into home offices.

Can you think of any precedent for what you describe anywhere in the world, at a rural location, for something which runs for less than a week. 

[gooner1990]

1 minute ago, clarkete said:

Can you think of any precedent for what you describe anywhere in the world, at a rural location, for something which runs for less than a week. 

Coachella?

[incident]

1 hour ago, DeanoL said:

The infrastructure required is just burying some ethernet cable.

No, of course it isn't. Ethernet has a sensible maximum distance of ~100 metres, which can stretch to maybe 150 if you're lucky. Just about every link would need to be a multiple of that. At minimum any permanent fixed infrastructure would need to be Fibre, and the costs for that increase massively and require more infrastructure than just the actual line.

[gfa]

2 hours ago, Jose Pose said:

But we pay £9 for that, so it isn’t costing Glasto anything, if anything it’s a way for them to profit as it stands. 

 

11 hours ago, Superscally said:

Which the punter, not the fest pays for.

Sure but when they do change it they could lower the price to like £5, not have to post anything and deal with issues and make even more as profit.

[incident]

17 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

Coachella?

Much smaller site, far fewer entrance points, and not even that rural.

Remember that GFL doesn't control all of the land used - several of the gates are on land that's rented for a few weeks of the year which complicates fixed infrastructure.