Ticket stubs will soon be going the way of the dodo bird.
According to Don Muret of SportsBusiness Daily, the 49ers will stop printing tickets to games in 2015.
The decision flows from heavy adoption of the team’s mobile ticketing device. The 49ers expect 30,000 fans to use mobile ticketing for Sunday’s game against the Rams.
“Our goal when we launched this system was to drive adoption and the numbers have been mind-boggling,” COO Al Guido told Muret. “We want to rip the Band-Aid in year two, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Customers will still be able to print tickets at home, but gone are the days of the collectible piece of tangible proof of attendance at a game. And the 49ers will save a lot of money by doing it.
“We’ll be using those dollars for other gifts,” Guido said.
Of course, in 18 years (or a lot sooner) those duffel bags, ear phones, and wireless chargers will be long gone. Unlike, for example, the ticket stub from the 1995 AFC title game in Pittsburgh, where it cost a mere $65 to see Bill Cowher’s Steelers narrowly beat 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and the Colts. (It’s not for sale, but if it were, it would cost more than $65.)
At a time when the NFL wants to make the in-stadium experience better than the at-home experience, giving the fans something that will make going to the game even more memorable doesn’t hurt. Here’s hoping other teams won’t follow the 49ers’ lead on this one.
