I wrote up an article for Vice Sports on Friday on how several sports teams, including the New York Yankees and Minnesota Timberwolves, have banned the use of print-at-home tickets, ostensibly to prevent fraud and counterfeiting but really because it allows them to control the resale of tickets via their own phone apps. I didn’t cover it here because it’s not really so much about stadiums, but following yesterday’s fiasco at NYCFC‘s home opener, I can’t resist:
NYCFC, which plays at Yankee Stadium, announced Friday that the team would no longer accept paper tickets, but the policy would be phased in.
The change—shockingly—led to chaos at Sunday’s NYCFC game.
https://twitter.com/readDanwrite/status/709126147490123777
https://twitter.com/readDanwrite/status/709120927213211649
Apparently what happened is that NYCFC allowed the use of print-at-home tickets, but required that they be “verified” before fans could enter, whatever that means. (Isn’t verification what the scanners at the turnstiles do?) The result was that shortly before game time (it’s hard to tell whether this was taken eight minutes before game time or just posted then), the inside of the stadium looked like this:
Thanks to member [Albany] for the pic. 8 minutes out! pic.twitter.com/wqaKJ9UmQ2
— NYCFC Forums (@NYCFCForums) March 13, 2016
With NYCFC half owned by the Yankees, I can’t wait to see how they to resolve this by suggesting that fans all get their fingerprints scanned.
UPDATE: We have our first eyewitness report, and it indicates that the problem yesterday may have been due more to incompetence than intent:
@neildemause I used pdf tickets from stubhub. Was directed to gate 4 went in at 4:25 and had no problems
— Brian Rooney (@BRooney1982) March 14, 2016
UPDATE #2: An NYCFC official says the problem wasn’t the print-at-home tickets, which were accepted at all gates, but an eight-minute malfunction with the turnstile scanners that backed up the queues at the peak of pregame entry. Still awaiting word back on what the “verification” process was that had tickets scanned once before fans went through security and once after.