From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification.
You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anymore.
Apparently they've been making exceptions for him in years past where he was able to pay hundreds of dollars to have them custom printed for him. And this year they've decided to no longer provide that exception.
Honestly, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better. You also can't buy tickets any more by snail mail with an enclosed check.
If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone. It seems like he just likes the nostalgia of paper tickets. But that's not a reason to add a separate ticketing flow just for him any more, like they had been up till now.
https://www.aol.com/articles/81-old-lifelong-dodgers-fan-012...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dodgers/comments/1s5fkni/la_dodgers...
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone. Maybe he has dexterity issues that make using a smartphone difficult. Maybe he doesn't want to install their invasive app. Maybe he finds that paper tickets are easier to manage. Maybe he recognizes that the vendor made this change to benefit themselves at the expense of the fans, as it allows them greater control of the resale market.
I own a smartphone but prefer paper tickets. Luckily I can (and do) still get them at my team's stadium, although I have to pick them up in person.
He shouldn't even need a reason. "I don't want a smartphone" should be sufficient and should not lock one out of commerce, events, and other cultural experiences.
In 50 years, everyone's going to have an advertisement-injecting brain implant, and stores are going to require you to have one in order to purchase anything, and they'll lock you out of commerce as a filthy Luddite if you don't get one. And, 50 years from now, commenters on HN will defend those businesses because the implant is "modern" and supporting those ancient smartphones and credit cards is hard to do.
I do worry how smart phones have become mandatory for a lot of services. Viscerally, I don't like it, because of the monthly payment aspect. I don't have an elaborate theology that is not self-contradictory, it just seems wrong to me.
He can get a smartphone dedicated to the ticket app if it is such a huge piece of his life/hobby
"Cheap android phone" on Google Shopping shows options for $30. Didn't even know they get that cheap.
Is then logging into your Google account (if you have one) also without cost and tradeoffs?
> Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone.
In my country right now there's a lot of hand-wringing about the impact of social media and smartphones on teenagers' mental health and education. We've got schools banning phones, and the government wanting to introduce age checks for social media. Infinite doomscrolling in your pocket, endless brainrot short-form videos, it's not healthy and we need to get smartphones out of the hands of the young.
So there are good reasons people might choose not to get a smartphone.
Then exactly the same government also proposed people wouldn't be allowed to work without a 'Digital ID Card' - making smartphones (and google/apple accounts) mandatory.
No there isn’t a good reason for the nanny state and giving the government more power over your life
I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law, but I really wish they would pass a law requiring supporting people without smartphone apps. Obviously there would be some exceptions where justified, even for things other than “the app is the whole point” and those need to be thought through, but in this case and plenty of others, there’s just no reason they can’t accommodate non app users. “It costs more to support non app users” is not a sufficient justification.
The law that he can invoke in a weaponized way is the ADA.
It’s vague enough about what a disability is, that something like “my hand tremor and farsightedness preclude using a touchscreen, I request a reasonable accommodation” is a valid request. If they deny admission and accommodation to somebody incapable of using a smartphone, there is a whole army of lawyers that will gladly take the case on contingency.
As you note, the app is not inherent to seeing a game, or preventing resale. There’s no reason an id and confirmation number can’t be used to get him in.
There is a special ring of hell reserved for people who abuse the ADA.
Such abuse is an insult to everyone who needs it, everyone who engages with it in good faith, everyone who spends gobs of money to make events and services accessible to those with genuine need.
I don’t rule the world but if I did abusers of protective rules would be summarily executed. (Don’t vote for me. I’ve got a short but significant list of similar policies. Scammers those guys would have targets on their heads, kidnap for ransom criminals those guys too)
I don't agree that using the ADA in this way would be abuse.
The ADA was a rare "great" law, in that it is sweeping, applies broadly to many different forms of disability, and it provides companies very little leeway to weasel their way out of complying. It also provides us with a very, very good generic framework for consumer protections, should we ever get an administration who cared about consumer freedom over corporate interests. I'd love to see other (not disability related) ADA-like laws that compel companies to make other reasonable accommodations to be inclusive of reasonable consumers. All kinds of amazing "consumer bill of rights" regulation could be modeled after the ADA.
> “It costs more to support non app users” is not a sufficient justification.
For sure. If that was true the answer would be "charge the non-app users a nominal fee to cover the cost".
Invasive tracking is the point, not the cost. It's anti-consumer.
> “It costs more to support non app users” is not a sufficient justification.
Then why is 'I don't wanna' sufficient justification to force non-critical services to support your preferences forever?
> I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law
No policy or law shall be enacted that directly or indirectly requires a use of a computing device where any other alternative at all is possible. Where offering other alternatives presents a cost, that cost (and only that cost, with no markup) may be passed on to the consumer.
That could still get prohibitively expensive. Take the example from this article, where there's only one person still using the paper ticket option...
I could see someone arguing you need a specially trained staff member or supervisor to verify your ID for anti-scalping, which they don't need to do for other e-tickets. Say only one person uses this option all season, they could be asked to pay for an entire employee's salary/benefits.
It's a bit hyperbolic, but supporting non-standard workflows is organizationally expensive with many non-quantifable costs.
If the law had existed all along, it would not be a non-standard workflow.
And there is precedent on the pricing. For example, FAA is not allowed to charge any more for any service than it costs to deliver said service, which is why if i lose my pilot's license, a replacement is $3.
>Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone.
Maybe he doesn't then get any of the benefits of having a smartphone.
I don't understand why we need to bend over backwards for folks who have chosen to ignore modernity. There was a woman in my neighborhood association at one point who would throw a fit about us using email for communication because "not everyone has a computer you know." This was in 2018. As a society, we've gone completely out of our way to make living on your own terms legal and doable. You don't even have to get you or your kids vaccinated if you don't want to! But then going even farther and expecting to get all the same benefits as folks who've decided to accept and use modern technology is ridiculous... the Dodgers don't owe this man physical season tickets, just like Google doesn't owe me the ability to physically mail in a search term and have the results physically mailed back to me.
If it's so important to modernity then it shouldn't be handled by private companies.
Your idealism is fine, and I think regulation of this is completely reasonable, but this isn't much different than private automobile or bicycle companies for transportation. The biggest issue here is an anti-trust concern about two app stores, which should not be allowed. That has nothing to do, however, with having a portable computer to help you with high-end exchanges of goods and services.
A business doesn't have to serve all customers. You can't walk into 99.99% of USA stores and pay in rupees or yen or yuan. This is no different. They can choose what they accept and what they don't. Just like not every store takes credit cards or doesn't take certain credit cards (discover, amex) or doesn't take bitcoin.
Have you had the pleasure of coaching a technologically illiterate grandparent through the process of learning how to use a smartphone? It’s a never-ending job and disheartening for all parties involved. Modern mobile UX is not designed with accessibility for the elderly in mind, and it is constantly changing in a way that demands constant re-learning. Not to mention the disabilities and neurological conditions often involved.
It's not designed for anyone to go though - Yesterday I setup an Nintendo Switch for my Uncle. There were so many steps it was ridiculous. Off the top of my head
1. enter your language
2. enter your region
3. enter your wifi and password
4. select your wifi (why 3 didn't do this I have no effing idea)
5. create a MII, you can't skip this step though you can pick a pre-created one
6. link your MII to an account - you can skip this but the device is useless without an account if you didn't buy games on physica media
7. Setting up an account shows a QR code so now you have to get our your phone
8. Enter your email and get send a verification email
9. switch to your email app and find the code
10. switch back to your browser and enter the code
11. Fill out your name/address/phone etc....
12. Now you want to download an app so you can use your switch so, pick e-store
13. Get QR code and scan
14. Get told you were sent another email verification
14. Go to email app and get code
15. Switch back to browser and enter code
16. Type in your CC Card info
17. Now pick a game to purchase
18. The purchase button is off screen after a bunch of legalize before it and no indication you need to scroll down
19. Choose purchase
20. Get told you need to verify again (in a tiny box you can check "remember me")
there were more steps. The whole process took about an hour, maybe longer
Even with all of that, there just a ton of stuff about a Switch that's taken for granted or poorly designed. As an example, he wanted to play Switch Sports Golf. The Switch home screen assumes you're using both controllers. At some point Switch Sports Golf switches to using just one controller. That's not clear at all. Another example, you pick Golf. It displays a screen showing you to hold the controller down and press the top button (X), but also on that screen is a generic, "press (A)" to continue this dialog. It's a very poorly designed screen giving to conflicting directions.
I get it, he's not the target market.
I have! Do it everyday as a program coordinator and you have an incredibly pessimistic view. Is it challenging and do many need continued resources? Yes, but I see seniors learn and embrace new technology as they want/need every day. LA has some amazing digital literacy programs, along with free devices.
I'm in my 40s, there is a shit ton of modern UX I struggle with. Basically anything gesture based for example, but really a lot of apps are just shit and have no sensible UX design behind them, so you need to try to click everything and hope you don't mess something up.
To me it's easy to see how someone over 70 might simply refuse to use an app. Especially if it doesn't support scaling the UI to well.
The first time I used iOS I noticed a lot of things it considers "normal" are completely undiscoverable unless you know.
Swipe down from the top. No, the other top.
Click share, now click "find in page". Wait, that doesn't share at all?
"Share" is one of the worst inventions of all. What it does in phones is random across apps and platforms, and usually has nothing to do with what the word "share" means in any other context.
If you think of it as "send" rather than "share" it makes a lot more conceptual sense. Don't get caught up on the word.
It's almost always to send the content somewhere, whether it's a platform, an app, the clipboard, etc.
Not always always, but almost always.
You're sharing data between apps. It's an app->app API, essentially. You can easily send an app store listing to your Reminders "Wishlist" section if you want, for example.
It's definitely not only social sharing.
I wasn't even thinking social. Problem is, the actual operation being done is one of:
- Give the other app a temporary/transient copy of a document or a file
- Give the other app the actual file (R/W)
- Give the other app the actual file but some other way (there's at least two in Android now, I believe?)
- Give the other app some weird-ass read-only lens into the actual file
- Re-encode the thing into something else and somehow stream it to the other app
- Re-encode the thing into something else and give it that (that's a lossy variant of transient copy case - example, contact info being encoded into textual "[Name] Blah\n[Mobile] +55 555 555 555" text/plain message).
- Upload it to cloud, give the other app a link
- Upload it to cloud, download it back, and give the other app a transient downloaded copy (?! pretty sure Microsoft apps do that, or at least that's what it feels when I try to "Share" stuff from that; totally WTF)
- Probably something else I'm missing.
You never really know which of these mechanisms will be used by a given app, until you try to "Share" something from it for the first time.
Now, I'm not saying the UI needs to expose the exact details of the process involved. But what it should do is to distinguish between:
1. Giving the other app access to the resource
2. Giving the other app an independent copy of the resource (and spell out if it's exact or mangled copy)
3. Giving the other app a pointer to the resource
In desktop terminology, this is the difference between Save As, Export and copying the file path/URL.
Also, desktop software usually gives you all three options. Mobile apps usually implement only one of them as "Share", so when you need one of the not chosen options, you're SOL.
I still despise whoever decided that swipe-from-top needs 2 versions somehow
"Buttons" that are just labels, that's on the top of my F* U list.
I don’t think people understand the scale of the issue. Each decade that goes by we welcome a new class of elderly, and each decade that goes by, we continue to write off those elderly users.
The failure of the well-intentioned but insufficient currents solutions is well underlined by this case. Sure, you could get this guy an android phone with a custom launcher, or an iPhone on Assistive Access, and he might be able to place a call. But good luck setting him up on Ticketmaster, or the Dodgers website, or wherever they expect him to go to redeem and utilize his tickets.
At airports and drugstores, the magazine racks will usually have a "Guide to iPhone/Android" type publication with a ton of pictures that are aimed at this market. I picked one up and realized while flipping through it that there is way too much for a brand new user to be able to absorb. The gestures needed on iOS to pull up options that are otherwise invisible in the UI will be nonsensical to someone whose UI/UX frame of reference is an ATM screen or a gas pump (or self-checkout kiosk which they might not use) where every option is shown on screen without needing additional navigation. Just like the first iPhone, come to think of it.
Now have your grandparent try to teach you something you aren't interested in and don't really want to learn, and see how it goes.
This guy has a flip phone. Seems like that was the last “new” thing he could learn. Its user flows never change and he’s memorized it. The idea that the average old person is so obstinate that they would refuse to learn the new technology if it was easy to do so is not something I can accept. Not being able to communicate and interact with the modern world on its terms isn’t fun for anyone.
There's an older guy at my office who often says "if you don't want to do something, don't learn how" and I think this attitude is common. It's not that they can't learn this smartphone stuff, they just don't want to use it.
That's their choice, but they also choose to suffer the consequences. Expecting the world to cater to your needs specifically is such a typical boomer attitude and should no longer be tolerated.
And, expecting people who are happy with what they already have and have already paid for to switch to your newer, more complicated, more expensive system so that your numbers go up is another attitude that should not be tolerated.
I am sure that you also think they should have a place for his horses to feed because he doesn’t want to deal with a car.
Horses, no. That would impose quite a lot on everyone else. But walking, or taking the bus, vs. owning an expensive personal transportation device... yes.
While we're at it, let's get rid of the ADA. Those disabled people expecting the world to cater to their needs specifically are so abusive to those of us with perfectly functional bodies and flexible minds.
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The ADA forces reasonable accommodations. It doesn’t mean that car manufactures have to build cars for blind people.
There's a big difference between legislating accomodations for people who physically can't do something, vs. those who can but choose not to.
The former makes sense. The latter doesn't. I don't get to park in handicapped spaces that are closer to the store just because I'd like to.
Using a battery powered electronic device as a “pass” detected by another handheld electronic device, both of which are contacting cell towers, exchanging data with data centres 100s of kms away, filling out detailed profiles of user behavior … rather than a paper ticket?
You will be the "boomer" some day. I wish people had more empathy.
An example: Presbyopia came on hard for me in the last couple of years Now I really appreciate low-vision affordances that, as a younger person, I couldn't have cared less about and would have seen as an unnecessary cost.
I used to laugh about the 'picture signs'; like the universal nose in book sign that means library. Or the airport logo on the exit sign on the freeway.
Until I spent some time in a country whose predominate language (and signage) was not english.
Maybe those pictorial signs are a good idea after all.
Exactly.
When OP is 85, I hope some whippersnapper 20 year old says to him, "Come on, grandpa. You need to get that neural advertisement brain implant like the rest of us, or you can't buy anything. Why should businesses need to support your lame smartphone? Step into the 22nd century, pops!"
No it’s often just stubbornness. My dad is 85 and he can take the time to learn anything he wants to learn. But refuses to change when he doesn’t.
My mom is 83, a retired school teacher and she has been using computers since 1986 and has an entire networked computer setup in her office with multiple computers and printers. She went from the original Apple //e version of AppleWorks to Office now.
> My dad is 85 and he can take the time to learn anything he wants to learn. But refuses to change when he doesn’t.
I think that's natural and reasonable. I'm certainly less tolerant of drains on my time as I get older. I can imagine that, at 85, I would be making a lot of calculations about ROI on my time.
Edit: For those seeing an argument in my statement above re: forcing people to use technology or forcing business to make an accommodation for people who don't want to use technology: I am not making a statement either way. I'm simply saying it seems logical and reasonable, natural even, to value your time more when you have less of it.
Great. Then you can decide whether it's worth the ROI to buy a phone for your season tickets or not.
But if you don't want to, then you shouldn't be expecting other people to accomodate you.
And then that’s a you problem no one should be forced to make affordances for things you can do and are unwilling to do
I think the most frustrating thing is that UI's largely haven't improved in 10-15 years, yet we still get constant changes from people trying to justify their jobs or manufacture "impact".
This is why it's so important to iteratively adapt. I'm not saying you have to catch every new version, but to go from a NES to a PlayStation 5 would be a jarring experience like going from a dumb cell phone (or landline?) to an iPhone 17.
I would say catch enough iterations to keep the basic premise in mind, because there is a bit of personal responsibility to maintain technological literacy in the modern age. A telephone isn't really an esoteric device, either.
My Dad and I have had about 7 sessions just on copy-and-paste on the computer. He kind of got it for a minute there, but didn't use it enough, so now it's gone and he's back to just re-typing everything.
The second biggest reason (after freedom to install apps) why I don't use an iphone is: for the love of God I can't use the gesture to switch windows. It used to be simple swipe up from bottom. Now you have to do an arc or something from the corner. I can never get it right.
In a case like this, you just buy the tickets for your grandfather and print them out for him.
If the app is meant to defeat counterfeits or reselling the Dodgers won’t be willing to accept printed tickets.
It's not possible to make counterfeits with a modern ticketing system. Each ticket is a unique code, and they are scanned on entry to match with the codes in the system.
As for resale: The attendee name is tied to the ticket in these cases, and ID is checked at the door. I guess an app could be more effective for preventing this than normal digital/paper tickets.
- [deleted]
> At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
I don't agree that it's better. Why should I have to worry about my ticket running out of battery power or being such a high-value pickpocket target once I'm already in the venue?
The latter is a huge issue at music festivals for example:
- https://old.reddit.com/r/OutsideLands/search/?q=phone+stolen...
- https://old.reddit.com/r/electricdaisycarnival/search/?q=pho...
- https://old.reddit.com/r/coachella/search/?q=phone+stolen&in...
Can't just leave it at home if you need it to get in to the thing.
I'm not a fan of the "something better" phrasing myself. It's very much anti-systems-thinking.
Engineers should be honest that everything is a tradeoff. For the up-front convenience you get with phone tickets, you impose additional failure modes, dependency chains, and accessibility issues that simply weren't a problem with paper ticketing.
The "phone-ification" of everything will probably bite us in the behind in the future, just like the buildout of out car-centric environments does now.
>For the up-front convenience you get with phone tickets
Even as a person who does have a smartphone, I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster. It's only a positive trade-off for venues or whoever. If they texted or emailed me a QR code, that would be a positive tradeoff (and a texted QR code would probably work for this guy's flip phone too)
> I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster.
Case in point: I traveled from St. Louis to Houston for a concert a few years ago. Before I left home to catch my flight, I installed the Ticketmaster app on a phone and verified that I could bring up the tickets. When I tried it again in my hotel an hour before the conference, it no longer worked because the fraud detection in their app was apparently confused as to why I was now in Houston.
Fixing this took 45 minutes on hold to get a support agent and a frantic call to my wife so she could check the disused email address I used to sign up for Ticketmaster 20 years earlier and get the verification code they sent.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike digital tickets, but this is one of them. I used to go to dozens of concerts every year. Now it's such a hassle that I don't bother unless it's small venue that doesn't play these games.
That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.
We attended a once-in-a-lifetime show last fall (a performer who is aging and likely won't tour again) a two hour drive away. I wouldn't install the Ticketmaster app and played an old man "character" with the box office to get them to print my tickets and hold them at will call. I played the "we are driving in from out of town" card, etc, and they accommodated me.
I tried that with a closer venue a couple of months ago and got told, in no uncertain terms, "no app no admittance". I knuckled-under and loaded the app on my wife's iPhone (which she insists on keeping because Stockholm syndrome, I assume). I feel bad that I gave in (because it makes me part of the problem). I really wanted to see the show and I wasn't willing to forego it on principle. (Kinda embarrassing, actually.)
> That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.
Not to justify it, but we've been fighting this kind of crap for a long time with credit cards and their bonehead "anti-fraud" checks. I'm often on the phone with my credit card issuers every time I travel somewhere because their moronic systems think "different country = fraud" and lock me out until I call them and perform their pointless rituals for them over the phone. Even if you tell them in advance that you're traveling (which I object to because my vacation plans are none of their business), they still often get it wrong and flag you.
Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?
Don't do that. Create a new account with the email address you have access to.
Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.
Sorry, but that one's on you.
Ticketmaster failing to recognize that someone might want to use a ticket in physical proximity to the event is not the user's fault.
- [deleted]
Don't victim-blame.
This is how I feel with the places that want to lock up your phone. There are safety considerations in that. But we're just astrotrufed into the "well this is better" PR campaigns from yondr.
They caught organized outside groups stealing phones from people at these events: https://abc7chicago.com/post/lollapalooza-stolen-cell-phones...
In most cases, digital event tickets are a QR code which is just an alphanumerical code. You can easily print them, so you don't have to worry about your phone.
I've never seen digital tickets which aren't printable.
> I've never seen digital tickets which aren't printable.
Here you go; now you have: https://help.ticketmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/265843090383...
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
He's 81 and that's your first thought? This dude was in his twenties before long distance telephone calling via phone numbers was commonplace. That was the new technology he learned as a young adult man.
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)?
>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.
- [deleted]
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
This logic justifies buying any other unrelated product as a condition of being allowed to buy baseball tickets. Does this mean that the Dodgers should be able to make "owning a car" also a condition of being allowed to buy baseball tickets? After all, if you can afford season tickets, you should be able to afford a car payment. Maybe they should only let people in who own rolexes because, hey, a season ticket holder should be able to afford a nice watch, too.
I can't think of any other case pre-smartphone, where I'd be denied the ability to buy a product simply because I didn't want to have to buy another totally unrelated product as a condition. There's probably an example that's not immediately coming to mind, but I don't think it was common or justified.
In some stadiums, the seat and the ticket are sold separately (example: Levi's Stadium [0]). You have to buy the seat and if you want to see a game, then buy a ticket to sit in the seat you own to watch that game (or rock concert).
Notes:
Even before computers there were companies that required you to pay for a phone (call) in order to transact with a business. Or interact with a mail carrier to order something by mail order.
> I can't think of any other case pre-smartphone, where I'd be denied the ability to buy a product simply because I didn't want to have to buy another totally unrelated product as a condition.
Then you must not have been around pre-smartphone? Those of us who were will remember having to buy either banknotes or checks. Later, some would accept a certain type of card that you could buy. If you weren't willing to buy any of those things there was little chance of a deal taking place. Showing up with your goat to offer in exchange would get you laughed out of the room, even though there was an even earlier time where bringing a goat would have been considered quite reasonable. Realistically, the most desperate vendors will still accept your goat as payment if that is what's on the table, but, as I am sure you can imagine, it isn't worth the effort for those who have the luxury of choice. Where technology makes a seller's life simpler, they will demand it. Why wouldn't they?
None of this is comparable lock-in. You could buy checks from hundreds of different vendors and none had any lock-in on you. You could use a different vendor each time if you wanted. By certain type of card I assume credit cards, which can also be had from thousands of different banks.
Also, credit cards are free to get and checks cost a few pennies.
Not remotely comparable to being forced to buy a phone to get to a game.
Plenty of people can't get credit cards.
Plenty of people can't even get bank accounts.
It's absolutely comparable lock-in.
Every bank and credit union I've banked with provides free checks, a free debit card, and no fees for ATM cash withdrawals.
If my bank gave me a free smartphone, I might be OK with using it for commerce. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if I have a strong opinion on that one.
It does seem pretty unreasonable to me. He’s an 81yo life long dodgers fan. You make exceptions like you’ve always done. It’s what makes human, and sets us apart from computers.
Someone at the soulless corporation fucked up, and there will be no consequences, even though there should be.
They could have done this for like 5 game minutes of what they pay Ohtani (~$500).
But it fits with the general trend of MLB being openly hostile to their fans for a while now.
what they one day will pay Ohtani. Eh, they're not not paying him this year too, never mind.
> you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
It’s hard to argue that having to manage a smartphone and its ever-changing apps and UI flows for purchasing and handling tickets, is simpler than buying a paper ticket with paper money. Is it really better?
It's better for the company not the customer
This. It's just another form of hidden inflation at play.
Smartphones, appification, and self-service is usually a downgrade from immediately preceding solutions for everyone except young folks who are money-poor and time-rich, so think nothing of wasting the latter. But this state flips for most around the time they start their career, or at the latest when they start families.
I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though.
The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a blind person / person with low vision without a smartphone these days: they’re a near-essential window into services that aren’t accessible though plain paper.
If they're 81yo, you definitely will.
> “undue financial hardship”
If they have already moved away from paper tickets for everyone else, now there is financial hardship, not to mention the loss to the team's economic position from scalping. Also smartphones have supported usage by the blind for years, particularly on iOS.
In the linked video they explicitly print him a paper ticket that he purchased separately.
Visually impaired people use smartphones too. If the app isn't supporting the accessibility features of the platform, it should still be held liable under the ADA.
(Unfortunately it won't as was found when Southwest Airlines was sued over this. Congress hasn't updated the ADA to include web sites since the ADA precedes the web and so it wasn't enumerated explicitly. Also unfortunately, the GOP who have never been huge fans of the ADA have blocked any attempts at patching that hole.)
But check out the settings on your iPhone/iPad or Android device. Whole sections dedicated to accessibility, especially for the visually impaired.
Visual impairment was just my naive example - but maybe there’s a better one that still persists.
Regardless, maybe there’s a path to legislation forbidding smartphone requirements for huge monopoly businesses like national professional sports leagues. I’d hate for ownership of a consumer device to become codified as a requirement for participation in activities like this.
Yes because we really need to give the government more power to selectively go after businesses - what could possibly go wrong?
> I’d hate for ownership of a consumer device to become codified as a requirement for participation in activities like this.
What is your reasoning for that sentiment? (I don't disagree)
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Smart phones have had plenty of affordances for blind people. But they didn’t say he was blind or unable to use a smart phone
For that matter, he could/should look into filing an ADA complaint all the same.
Many stadiums make it near impossible to buy paper tickets. Even then they start arguing with you to prevent you from doing that.
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone. It seems like he just likes the nostalgia of paper tickets. But that's not a reason to add a separate ticketing flow just for him any more, like they had been up till now.
If you have money for a tea or coffee, you have money to send to me. Just because someone may have the means to buy something doesn't mean they they should be excluded from participating in cultural events for not purchasing and maintaining that particular thing. (Citizens often times over subsidize the stadiums in which the team is based in)
I think it's the golden state warriors that forces you to give them your biometrics to enter the stadium.
IMO, the right thing to do is grandfather in any existing season ticket holders, if they ask. Have them go to a specific entrance where someone can check an ID and mark them off a list. Simple job for an intern or whatever.
I agree. He's one of some tiny number of people that all the staff will know on sight. Even printing a ticket for him is just a formality really.
> Honestly, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
It is completely unreasonable, but for a different reason. This is not technology A (paper ticket) vs tecnhology B (phone).
It is about open vs. proprietary. Paper is paper, it does not forcefully tie the user to anything. A phone is a requirement to be forced to do business with one of only two megacorporations, for something completely unrelated. He wants to buy a game ticket, not a phone.
Imagine you want to buy a sandwich but are told you must first buy an earring, completely unrelated and not something you want.
There is nothing reasonable about the app's privacy policy.
So what you are saying is, it's ok to exclude the Amish, and others who chose not to use a cell phone for religious (or other) reasons, from buying a season ticket. That sounds like discrimination on the basis of religion ;)
This is a strong disagree from me. What this is implying is that the customer now has to buy into two ecosystems: the expensive, Dodgers, tickets, and stadium world; and the far more perilous, casino in your pocket, attention sucking, hell, that's smartphones. Countless articles are being written on the effect of smartphones on the elderly (and teens). But you know what? Fuck'em. Because progress.
Another comment suggested grandfathering in customers like this. Sure, that's one idea. But generally, don't punish the masses because of the crimes of the few.
I'm certain VIPs don't scan their phones when they come to the game. This man is nothing short of a VIP.
How old are you? Some day you are going to get old and you won’t like that train of thinking.
> At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
Perhaps. But in this case, they've moved to something worse. Digital tickets have their benefits, but paper tickets are still superior because they don't tie you into big tech relationships and don't require supporting infrastructure to work.
Paper also does not run out of battery or smash if you drop it.
It does, however, easily get lost or left behind.
Phones, on the other hand, can be charged. And if they're smashed, you can just log into your account on a friend's phone if you haven't replaced yours yet. If you can't even do that, you can go to the ticket window and they can look up your account information and verify your ticket.
In New York the commuter trains use etickets and if you smash your phone you can just log into your account on a friends phone, but they track how many times you do that any only allow 3 switches. They don't say 3 switches in a certain period, it just says you can only log in 3 times and then the account is locked. After that you have to call them -- and who knows what....
Paper doesn't spy on you.
If you don't give the app any permissions, it doesn't spy on you either.
It doesn't have any more information than the info you give it to buy the tickets in the first place.
> It doesn't have any more information than the info you give it to buy the tickets in the first place.
Many apps ask for permission to use your GPS position and other sensor data, even though they don't need it. Most non-technical people don't understand what that means and will just allow it.
> Many apps ask for permission to use your GPS position and other sensor data, even though they don't need it.
What on earth are you talking about? I've installed hundreds of apps in my life and literally never seen that.
I have absolutely never in 15+ years of having an iPhone had an app ask for GPS or sensor data when it clearly wasn’t necessary for functionality like a maps app or Uber.
It does when the ticket app demands Location access "to protect your security"
You can set location to only while you're using the app. And when you open it to scan the ticket, they already know where you are. You're at the entrance to the stadium where they scan your tickets.
And that's when you find out the app considers this usage pattern as a signal of fraud, so then you can't get into the event and have no recourse. Their app, their rules, your loss.
Sorry but you've made that up. That's not a thing.
I saw your other comment, and that was your fault for not having access to your own e-mail account. Asking you to sign in with a verification code isn't blocking your ticket with "no recourse".
Not to mention, you can usually just go to the ticket office and they can look up your ticket if your app isn't working. Obviously they don't advertise this because they don't have enough people to handle if everybody did that. But they're not trying to lock you out from your own ticket.
>I saw your other comment, and that was your fault for not having access to your own e-mail account.
That's the point, though - we shouldn't need always-on, 24/7-access to email for everything always and forever. You're just victim-blaming at this point.
>If you don't give the app any permissions, it doesn't spy on you either.
We're talking about an 81 year-old who has never had a smartphone before and you're starting the sentence with "if"? And that's just that app, not the phone itself or anything else that someone brand new to, and ignorant towards, this ecosystem is going to encounter and not know what to do with.
> If you don't give the app any permissions, it doesn't spy on you either.
What about the other apps? What about the phone itself?
The guy already has a phone. Flip phones still track your location.
If you don't want other apps, don't install other apps.
>The guy already has a phone. Flip phones still track your location.
Locations from flip phones have to be triangulated. Smartphones track more precise locations and a lot more than just location data.
Great. If you're that paranoid, only turn your phone on to buy the tickets and when you're at the stadium. And don't use it for anything else.
This dude has previously paid hundreds of dollars per year because he wanted custom-printed tickets. He can pay a hundred for a cheapo Android to use exclusively for tickets and not give up any privacy at all, if he's more paranoid about tracking than the other 99+% of the population who uses smartphones just fine.
Well, depends where you drop it, paper is very fragile medium. Ever dropped an important paper into a puddle, or spilled a coffee on it?
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This is probably the most heartless thing I have read all day. I worry about the future of the world if this is the norm
> Honestly, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better. You also can't buy tickets any more by snail mail with an enclosed check.
As long as the technologies you move to are equally freedom- and privacy-respecting. If I have to use a non-free spyware app to buy your tickets I'm not buying. Now, if you let me pay for and download a PKPASS that I can use on my fully-libre GrapheneOS smartphone then sure.
> because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
How is this better?
Having to own anything beyond the money to buy something to buy something, is, in fact, unreasonable.
> At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
No, this has not changed for the entire time physical tickets haxe existed. What has changed is the level of greed practiced by that industry.
Soooo money is worthless now? … because tech?
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
Right, but he is wanting to choose the season pass over the smartphone. If he buys a smartphone then he won't have the money for a season pass anymore. It turns out you only get to spend x units of currency once.
A cheap undubsidized Android phone is $40 on Amazon
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Amazon also only sells digitally. So now he has to buy a smartphone in order to get a smartphone from Amazon in order to get tickets? The guy doesn't even want one smartphone let alone two.
Okay or Walmart are you now suggesting that the world should never move on from anything analog?
I agree, this is a good way to stop scalping and reduce costs by not having to print physical tickets. It's interesting to see the negative sentiment here given other threads about scalping overwhelmingly suggest we need government regulation to stop it. Well, here's a private solution to that problem but apparently that's also bad and requires threats of government action via the ADA... incredible.
Nothing's perfect. Some ideas to fight against things we don't like will come up, and then we'll see the collateral and go, "Oh, maybe that's actually not the best way to do it". That's okay! That's the way life goes! It's not "incredible" or hypocritical or whatever else you're trying to imply. What you're seeing is merely folk working through things.
Are we supposed to always jump at the first "solution", consequences be damned?
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
This misses the point.
The question is: why would a smartphone be required, to watch a local game?
> The question is: why would a smartphone be required, to watch a local game?
It's not. You can still buy physical tickets in person to watch a local game.
This is a requirement specifically for a season pass. If you don't want a season pass, you can still buy individual tickets.
It is not required to watch a game. At least not unless you are not using it as some kind of vision aid — although even then there are likely reasonable alternatives.
It is required to satisfy the desires of a vendor wanting to sell something. They make a smartphone a part of satisfying their desires because it makes their life a whole lot simpler. Same reason they won't give you season tickets in exchange for 12,000 bushels of wheat. They could, but why would they? If you don't want to play ball, so to speak, they are happy to sell their product to someone else who will.
> Honestly, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better. You also can't buy tickets any more by snail mail with an enclosed check.
The problem is, in the end it leads to a society where you NEED a smartphone to enjoy basic human existence - and yes, access to cultural and sports events is a fundamental part of being a human.
That in turn almost always means: your smartphone must be either Apple or a blessed Google device. And that in turn means: no rooting (because most apps employ anti-root SDKs these days), no cheap AOSP phones, no AOSP forks like Graphene OS. And that is, frankly, dystopian when your existence as a human being depends on one of two far too rich American mega corporations. Oh and it needs to be a recent model too, because app developers just love to go the easy route and only support recent devices on recent OS versions.
And that's before we get into account bans (which particularly Google is infamous for), international sanctions like the one against the ICC justices, or pervasive 24/7 surveillance by advertising SDKs or operating systems themselves.
I genuinely don't think people making the, "Get a smartphone or be left behind," arguments really understand the magnitude of the assertion.
>Honestly, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me. At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.
I've gone entire years at work where no one ever mentions baseball or MLB. It is a dead sport. The NBA? Sure. NFL? It's practically an official US holiday. So if they want to chase off an octogenarian fan who will buy their season tickets because they demand he get a smart phone that he doesn't want to learn to use and wouldn't use anyway... why not? They've signed their own death certificate with that. This is firmly in "Please drink a verification can" territory, and I have no idea why anyone would be apologizing for them.