I read this is going to be for the athletic year. I will be curious to see how this works for baseball as many people in patio and loge suites split the tickets. For instance we have 12 tickets in our loge suite 4 guys get 2 each and one guy gets 4. Every year I divide the tickets into 12 stacks with all the games in each. With a mobile ticket will we be able to divide the entire season into 12 individual tickets and distribute before the season starts? I have never used a mobile ticket not sure how they work?
Much of the issue with cellular connectivity falls on the shoulders of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other cellular providers. Network coverage/capacity in the city/parish of Lafayette is lacking. There are areas in the parish and city where coverage is extremely poor. The providers haven't kept up with the growth in the Lafayette metro. Now consider this, you have the daily average of people accessing the cellular network for data purposes, plus the individuals at Cajun Field using cellular data for tickets and who may be using cellular data to stream music for their tailgate, and you have problems. There is only so much cellular data bandwidth to go around and when you reach capacity you get the issues we have.
Deploying a Wi-Fi network across the athletic complex for ticketing access may be an option. In addition, partnerships with the cellular providers to increase capacity in the area would be an avenue to explore.
It's classic Ready, FIRE, Aim at it's best...even if the WIFi issue is fixed, these various issues will remain...This school must love creating issues to run off fans...so far, they've been very successful...
My only question is why? What does the university gain by doing this?
The only thing I can figure is it will make life much easier for the box office. The whole process of printing, processing and mailing thousands of season tickets will go away. And that's cool. But why not at least give people the option? Charge them an extra $10 or $20 for paper tickets. Doing this will incentivize everyone to switch to mobile, and more than cover the costs for printing and mailing the tickets, and not frustrate or dissuade your loyal season ticket holders from buying season tickets.
I personally love having the option for mobile tickets, but I know a few older season ticket holders who will be highly reluctant to get on board with it. One doesn't have a computer or smartphone. These are the type of people who still insist on mailing out 20 checks every month to pay bills even though autopay has been available for decades now.
There will absolutely be fans who drop their season tickets because of this new policy. I hope the administration understands this and is at least willing to be flexible and accommodate them.
You can complain about this all you want, but everything you mentioned here is a legitimate inconvenience or barrier to attending a game. No matter what stadium you go to, if the weather sucks, fewer people will show up. If the product costs too much money, fewer people will show up. And yes, mobile ticketing will also create a legitimate inconvenience or barrier for a small but loyal portion of our fan base.
UL is in the entertainment business. If our goal is to grow attendance, we have to 1. focus on providing a great game day experience, and 2 remove as many barriers to attendance as we reasonably can. Many of those barriers are things we can't control (like weather,) but we can sure as heck print out tickets.
Granted. But if mobile ticketing is final straw for some people, you kind of just have shake your head. If it’s not that, then it’ll be something else relatively benign.
Yes, the things we can control have to improve. Dr. M has been vocal about that. But, it’s mobile ticketing. It’s 2023. Trying to get a paper ticket in advance of any event from a baseball game to a concert, is getting more difficult.
I hope the admin manages this well and there are no issues. Have a plan to accommodate the minority that will have issues with this. But you can’t stop natural progress with the times because a small group might be inconvenienced.
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