Written by Noah Darnell
No longer will arenas and major music venues be the sole locations for Harding students to take advantage of the convenience of ordering tickets online. Beginning Tuesday Oct. 6, Harding University’s Campus Activities Board will be implementing a system of electronic ticketing when tickets for the upcoming Owl City concert go on sale.
In a similar way that other online ticketing agents such as Ticketmaster or TicketSherpa handle purchases and delivery, the new process takes the classic paper tickets out of the equation and deals with bar codes instead of ticket stubs.
Customers would log on to the Harding Tickets Web site at http://www.hardingtickets.com and register their accounts. Once registered, the customers purchase their tickets with a credit or debit card. Finally, the customers print an e-ticket receipt that contains information about the concert, times, dates, other secondary acts and – most importantly – the bar code that grants access to the concert.
At the venue door, a handheld scanner reads the bar code. Each bar code is unique to each purchaser and only allows for one entry per code. If a bar code is copied multiple times, only the first is allowed in, and the rest are rejected. Students with The Pass will still be required to purchase their tickets at the ticket booth this year, but they will be able to purchase tickets in advance of the general public.
“We are in the 21st century,” Director of Campus Life Corey McEntyre said. “I think technology is our friend and we should use it any way possible, and if we let technology get so far ahead of us, we’re going to have a huge jump to catch up, so we might as well move with it.”
To the student planning to attend the event, this technology upgrade in ticketing allows instant knowledge of which seats are or are not available, eliminates standing in line and prevents dealing with the “Will Call” booth the day of the event. To the event coordinators, this technology upgrade means lower overhead costs with no printed tickets, less mess to clean up afterwards from tickets left behind and immediate, accurate knowledge of how many people attended that night’s event. Additional information can be used to elicit feedback from those who came to the concert or even from people who bought tickets and chose not to attend.
“It is another way to further customer relations and student relations and just helping people feel like they have a reason to go to shows and give their input because we’re going to listen,” McEntyre said.
In addition to advances in technology, McEntyre is pleased with the promise of more environmentally friendly concerts with a future of no printed tickets. For the moment, the tickets will remain printed on a single sheet of printer paper, but McEntyre hopes to eliminate paper waste altogether. He hopes that, with the recent advent and proliferation of cell phones with full Internet access, plans will be in the works for a future mobile Web site version with a scannable bar code directly on the cell phone screen; thus the printed page is eliminated. Another option is a system with scanners that read the credit card that made the original purchase at the door, thereby eliminating paper waste.
The Owl City concert on Nov. 2 in the Administration Auditorium will be the first chance to use the equipment, and McEntyre said he is excited about the opportunity to test the process. His vision is to have a central ticketing office on campus to handle sales for everything – from CAB concerts and events to football and basketball games to Spring Sing and the Homecoming musical – and make the entire process easier for customers and organizers alike.
“This first run is very experimental and to see if we like it – I think we are going to – and I think it’s going to shape the way ticketing is done on campus,” McEntyre said.
