Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

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There's an amusement park we like to go to. We get season passes, which normally means renewing the small plastic card we got the first year. They've switched to app only this year, with the option of getting a card, if for some reason you cannot or will not use the app. I believe there's a small fee for issuing the card.

I believe their reasoning is much the same. They have some types of tickets, which can technically be handed over to others and abused. Think weekend ticket, where you hand the tickets to someone else for them to use on Sunday, or tickets that can be converted to season passes, if you do it the same day.

Blaming scalping doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, because there was always the option of making the tickets and season passes non-transferable. There are other methods. Especially if you're only issuing paper tickets as an alternative, e.g. yes we will sell you a paper version, but understand that it is absolutely non-transferable and non-refundable.

Some people might not want to bring a phone to these types of events and venues, which I can completely understand, neither do I, but I can live with it. The thing that bugs me is the lack of an alternative, which isn't really that expensive and which most won't even use. Because to some, the app really don't provide value and in those cases they solely exists for the benefit of one company. If you're paying the price of season passes to pretty much anything these days, I think you're entitled to some small level of personalized service and customization.

> Blaming scalping doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, because there was always the option of making the tickets and season passes non-transferable.

That's not desirable either. You often can't make it to all the games, so they want you to be able to give some tickets to friends, etc.

They're trying to prevent people who purchase the season pass to almost exclusively resell tickets to individual games.

So you really do need data to tell the difference -- are a third of the tickets mostly going to the same 5 other friends (OK, desirable), or are 95% of the tickets going to a different random person each time (scalping)?

The last time I had a season pass to something, they printed me the equivalent of an employee id badge with my face and name printed on it. The badge was the ticket. How do you resell an individual ticket?

You literally hand them your badge. Requires a lot of trust sure, but I did this to see Real Madrid in spain via hotel concierge, their friends just handed us their badges.

But you can do that the same way you do with the app. The does this by tying you ticket to your season pass, and to you. If you want to give the ticket to someone else, call the ticket office, ask them to re-register the ticket to your friend. If the ticket office notices that X number of tickets tied to that season pass has been re-registered, just refuse, or better, have the system refuse.

Fans can pick the easy option with the app, or if they really want, the expensive option where they need to go pick up the re-registered ticket if they want to give them to a friend. You can do this without the app, it's just more work, which isn't much of a hassle, as most won't pick this option and the passes are expensive enough that you can justify the extra handling cost of maybe 5% of the tickets.

>They're trying to prevent people who purchase the season pass to almost exclusively resell tickets to individual games.

Why do you need a smartphone to do this when a white list checked against ID at the door would suffice? As the other respondent says, you either generate a badge for the passholder, or have an approved list of guests that can use the season pass if the passholder chooses to offer it to others.

Generating badges has loopholes. (Trust me I’ve used them). And IDing every person can be a mission on itself. Pretty sure they will just start using biometrics in the next decade with or without your consent.

They already do! See Madison Square Garden [0] and The Intuit Dome [1]!

[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/21/1150289272/facial-recognition...

[1] https://stadiumtechreport.com/feature/intuit-dome-leaning-on...

>Generating badges has loopholes.

This seems to be an area where people will always find loopholes. Should this be a race-to-the-bottom in an attempt to make the most foolproof system possible, or do we at some point accept that maybe there's never going to be a perfect way to do this?

>And IDing every person can be a mission on itself.

I've worked the door at venues of various sizes, so it's not like I suggested this from ignorance. What we're talking about doesn't need to be "every person", just a specific set of ticketholders.

>Pretty sure they will just start using biometrics in the next decade with or without your consent.

I know I'm just me, speaking for me, and am a sample size of 1 that doesn't look like the general population in this regard, but there's no "with or without my consent" if I decide to opt out of going to games entirely. It'll be a cold day in hell before I give someone my biometrics just so I can watch someone try and hit a ball.

For sure you can ID everyone. Nightclubs, music festivals and even airports do this sort of thing all the time.

You just need good organisation, plenty of security stations, and an atmosphere that rewards people who arrive early - checking a stadium's worth of IDs over the course of 2-3 hours rather than over the course of 20 minutes.

What you can't do is charge $20 for a glass of beer then expect people to arrive 2-3 hours before the game starts.

And that will slow it down for everyone. Not to mention that HN users will then whine about the surveillance state

It could slow it down for everyone, or just the season passholders. If it does, oh well - there are worse things than taking an extra 10-15 minutes to get into a stadium.

>Not to mention that HN users will then whine about the surveillance state.

Pretty sure, given the comments in this very thread, that HN collectively understands there's more surveillance happening on your phone than with another person making sure the name on your ID matches the name on your ticket, or that your badge photo matches your face.

And HN users are not knowledgeable. When I challenge people to tell me how much surveillance can a third party app do on iOS without your permission…crickets.

They can buy their tickets at the door so they don't have to show an ID.

It's pretty common for people who rely on networking to have season passes and hand out various games as "gifts" to whoever they want to get on the good side of.

It's pretty common for people who rely on networking to have season passes and hand out various games as "gifts" to whoever they want to get on the good side of.

Very common.

Band X is playing at Stadium Y. Promoter Z buys 10,000 commercials on the local radio station, paid in part with cash and in part with tickets that are given to radio station sales department, which gives them to the clients; and the station's promotions department, which gives them to contest winners.

Our systems here indicate you're using your season pass in way that's inconsistent with personal use; we're going to have to bump your season passes to the business plan.

If you'd prefer additional amenities, we'd be happy to discuss the leasing of one of our suites with great views, perfect for corporate hospitality.

They could force you to re-sell your tickets through the team MLB site, and to sell them for face value.

If the tickets come in at less than face value because of the season sale (not unreasonable), that can work OK (particularly for good seats for a team like the Dodgers). Most folks simply won't be able to sell all of the tickets. The goal isn't to make ad hoc ticket sales a necessarily profitable enterprise, the goal is to sell season seats, so you have to be somewhat accommodating. Pretty hard for anyone to go to all 81 homes games.

This can only go so far, unless you make the sold ticket not transferable.

They can also allow some margin to be just outright sold at market. I know several season ticket holders who sell the tickets to the big games (like Dodgers/Yankees) at a premium to help offset the entire season ticket package.

Nothing about this requires an app. Just an ID.

Forcing the app is almost certainly for tracking purposes and justifying the decision for whatever braindead higher-up decided it was a good idea, therefore it must be made to work.

> They have some types of tickets, which can technically be handed over to others and abused.

Disney World had this trouble with their "Florida Residents Pass" - which was a lower cost annual pass just for Florida Residents. So they introduced face scanning technology to stop that. Other people would swap multi=park and multi-day passes to friends. So they introduced fingerprint scanning to stop that.

>They have some types of tickets, which can technically be handed over to others and abused. Think weekend ticket, where you hand the tickets to someone else for them to use on Sunday, or tickets that can be converted to season passes, if you do it the same day.

This is not abuse. If they sell a ticket for days worth of resources and you use two days of resources it's not abuse at all. That is a very consumer hostile attitude. If their business model relies on you not using what you paid for then they need a new business model.

The ticket is for “two days of resources that you personally can use”, not “two days of resources that can be used by any number of ticket-holders.”

It’s like the “free as in beer” explanation, I can’t pull up to my local bar running a promotion and fill up a tanker truck. Maybe they’re being hostile to me, a would-be customer, for that, but it’s simply not what’s being offered up.

Being advocate of the devil here.

Would you allow doing the same for gym memberships?

Using an example with even more shady pricing practices isn't going to help much here.

The app is also probably affecting the phone in some way when you're not trying to enter the park.

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