[News] Flames introduce paperless tickets

[Kev]

They should have just made them available to be scanned from your phone...

[Resolute 14]

I like the change, but a guy I know in Pittsburgh who collects tickets for every game the Pens play will be disappointed when I can't send him anything official looking.

[MissTeeks]

Geez, thanks Flames for cutting off my supply of free bookmarks.

[Enoch Root]

I am very happy to see them drop the $5 charge for emailing tickets - always thought that was ridiculous

[Bobblehead]

A group of 4 of us share 2 tickets. This is going to be a major hassle.

[bizaro86]

I'm ok with this change, although not excited about it. As long as they keep the free email transfers long term its not that big a loss to not get paper tickets. However, if they go back to charging for transfers or make it so the recipient has to sign up for a flames account then it would be a major loss.

Its definitely easier to give/sell an actual paper ticket to someone, imo.

[Drury18]

Originally Posted by Laner99

I hate this change. As a guy who uses a lot of tickets for work and gives a lot of tickets to clients I now have to either print out paper copies or deal with emailing tickets. I'd rather still be able to hand a customer a nice looking official ticket. Called me old fashion I guess.

I agree. I handle the Season Tickets for our company and we use many of them as gifts. To hand someone $1000 worth of tickets for the Avison Young Club printed out on computer paper as a gift or raffle for charity reeks of being cheap. As well, trying to get the card back or forward them by email and hope the person figures out how to print the email is going to be a headache. I can almost foresee someone printing out two sets of tickets and having the wrong ones at the door because they found the first set they printed and took those and the barcode was cancelled when they printed off the second set and then I get the angry email saying I gave them the wrong tickets and all that.

If you are a individual with seasons tickets though, this is a better idea. No more worrying about bringing the tickets with you and if you have to go from work to the game one night, you have the card easily with you. If you are the only one using them, this is far more convienient.

[Dagger]

I think the paperless scheme works much better in European football(where having a card is normal - even for non ST holders) as they attend a far higher percentage of the fixtures, but for hockey where there's double the amount of games and a majority aren't on the weekend it's far less feasible IMO. This is definitely a step towards gaining more money from second hand sales of tickets as they'll probably charge a $5-10 fee per ticket to transfer them in the future, which in my mind is sleezy to the ST holders who can't make the odd game and already fork out a lot of money for a deteriorating on ice product that most likely won't be challenging for the playoffs for a few years and be serious contenders for maybe 4-5.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Drury18

I agree. I handle the Season Tickets for our company and we use many of them as gifts. To hand someone $1000 worth of tickets for the Avison Young Club printed out on computer paper as a gift or raffle for charity reeks of being cheap. As well, trying to get the card back or forward them by email and hope the person figures out how to print the email is going to be a headache. I can almost foresee someone printing out two sets of tickets and having the wrong ones at the door because they found the first set they printed and took those and the barcode was cancelled when they printed off the second set and then I get the angry email saying I gave them the wrong tickets and all that.

If you are a individual with seasons tickets though, this is a better idea. No more worrying about bringing the tickets with you and if you have to go from work to the game one night, you have the card easily with you. If you are the only one using them, this is far more convienient.

Yeah, I'd be curious what percentage of STHs have one person attending more than 50% of the games, because this is worse for everyone else.

I sell some of the games I can't make at work and on here, and it goes way better when I have hard copy tickets. I printed a few last season when it was free before I had my hard copy ones, and I got a bunch of questioning about whether they were real. And I've worked at the same company my whole career, so there's no way I'd risk my job over $100 worth of fake flames tickets. But I could see it making it harder to sell them to people on CP or elsewhere, which is maybe the point. I suppose they want to capture the resale money using their new service.

[N-E-B]

I prefer paper tickets. That way, you can divide the tickets up amongst family/friends, and if you lose a set of tickets it's no big deal, but if you lose that card you lose everything. Thankfully the option for paper tickets is still available.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by N-E-B

I prefer paper tickets. That way, you can divide the tickets up amongst family/friends, and if you lose a set of tickets it's no big deal, but if you lose that card you lose everything. Thankfully the option for paper tickets is still available.

Getting a new card would be no more difficult than getting a new debit card at the bank. Voiding the old would be just as easy.

[Sec218]

I wonder how the Denver Bronco guy feels about this? I did see him trying to get rid of some ticketfast tickets at the last Stamps go though.

[Travis Munroe]

Someone mentioned that you can opt in for paper tickets still....are you referring to the printing out of tickets or is there somewhere I can request actual paper tickets from the flames?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Realtor 1

Someone mentioned that you can opt in for paper tickets still....are you referring to the printing out of tickets or is there somewhere I can request actual paper tickets from the flames?

It says on the link in the email that flames customer service will print your tickets, I would assume they would be basic ticketmaster style tickets with no fancy designs. It says there is no charge this season for this but that it would change down the road. It doesn't explain whether or not this voids your card or if you can still email tickets to people if you have had then printed.

[Jer Bu]

If there is a way to get paper tickets, I am doing it. There are many reasons I hate this change

- the hassle of forwarding so many tickets to people I share games with
- I save a lot of paper stubs for great games, sucks not having those any longer
- I am one of those that likes the nice season ticket package with the glossy tickets.
- No cool ticket draft to split up my season ticket package with friends
- No cool tickets to hand to my best clients
- Every year there are less and less cool things about being a season ticket holder. Less value every year. This is just another thing.
- The fact they said there was "positive response". That is exactly opposite of reality. 90% of the people at the last Ken King event I went to voted with their hands for having printed tickets. What a load of crap.
- My friends having to carry a big 8.5 by 11 piece of paper to get into their games

I could go on. The free forwarding is nice (and should have been included regardless).

The ticket exchange is past due as well, but good luck to anyone trying to move a Tuesday night Coyotes game going forward.

For once I would like to see the Flames ADD more value for their season ticket holder base. Every year since I started, something has gotten worse. As a friend of mine just told me, in all it seems they are trying to push out the middle class working fan, in favor of the corporate money bag.

/rant.

[Yorkshire Flame]

I am 100% in support of this.

[BurningSteel]

Originally Posted by Yorkshire Flame

I am 100% in support of this.

Ken is that you??

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

I am very happy to see them drop the $5 charge for emailing tickets - always thought that was ridiculous

They should really be taking this one step further though. If you go to the new paperless ticket there should be a discount on the ticket for them not having to spend money printing and shipping tickets.

They are saving on costs and at least some of that should go to the ticket holder. Otherwise I would rather they provide both the paper tickets, as per usual, as wel as the paperless one if I want it.

The next step should be to go to a digital system that cuts out ticketmaster and the ticketmaster fees and see some real drops in ticket pricing for the people that opt into that system.

[Drury18]

Originally Posted by Realtor 1

Someone mentioned that you can opt in for paper tickets still....are you referring to the printing out of tickets or is there somewhere I can request actual paper tickets from the flames?

Call (403) 777-4646, Option 1, tell the nice girl whose taken about 100 calls already today that you would like printed tickets as well.

When I called she said she has done nothing but answered calls with people asking for printed tickets for the last couple of hours. The email went out and people started calling asking for proper tickets.

[Dion]

Laminated tickets are the best