Blue Jackets tickets go paperless, angering some fans

Not all of the conflict at the Columbus Blue Jackets home opener Friday will be on the ice.

Some will play out at the box office, with fans angry the team has gone to paperless tickets.

"I'm sure this is easier for them, but not for us," said longtime season ticket holder Matt McGowan of Granville. "I probably won't renew next year."

Until this season, Blue Jackets tickets were much like airline tickets. There were three ways of getting them: printed tickets sent in the mail; emailed tickets with barcodes that could be printed; and the latest technology, tickets downloaded onto mobile phone apps.

This year, the Blue Jackets have followed other sports and entertainment venues in going to paperless tickets exclusively, requiring fans to show a barcode on their cell phone to gain entry to Nationwide Arena.

To use the system, fans must download the official NHL smartphone app, select the Blue Jackets as their favorite team and go through several more steps to get their tickets, which cannot be printed.

To buy transferred tickets, recipients must create their own Blue Jackets account, making life all but impossible for scalpers accustomed to hawking paper tickets outside the arena before games.

Fans transferring tickets must transfer them directly to someone else who has an account or sell them through the Blue Jackets system.

"I'm about as digital a person as there is, and I find it ridiculous," said Rob Joseph of Marble Cliff, who has been a season ticket owner for 17 years. "It used to be I got a book of tickets and would sit down with my group and pull out tickets and off we went. It wasn't until a friend and I did our split of tickets for the season that I realized what had happened.

"So I called and they said, 'Oh, yeah, we've gone to a paperless process,' and had this millennial tell me how exciting it was," said the 54-year-old Joseph. "And I found out that there is no provision to print out the tickets."

McGowan said he found out about the change six days before the first game.

"It just seems like someone said it's a great idea, but I don't think they had a 60-year-old guy in the room when they made the decision," McGowan said. "I'm 62, and I have buddies who don't have smart phones."

Blue Jackets officials acknowledge that "change is always difficult," said Cameron Scholvin, Blue Jackets senior vice president and chief revenue officer. "It depends on the person, so we're trying to deal with any issues on a case-by-case basis. But it's a better experience once you get comfortable with it."

The mobile-only tickets provide quicker and easier entry at the venue and reduce the risk of tickets being lost, stolen or counterfeited, according to Blue Jackets ticket vendor Ticketmaster.

Scholvin said the team will have staff on hand Friday at arena entrances to help people through the process.

The biggest challenge may come in transferring tickets, which was easy with paper tickets.

"This makes it in some ways impossible to do that," said Jamie Kaufman, president of Dream Seats, a Columbus-based ticket broker.

"We have people come to us saying, 'Can I print this out?' And we have to tell them, 'No, it's digitized and it won't scan.' For our industry it becomes more challenging. Our customers are very uncomfortable with this.

"We've already had some of our customers say clients don't have smart phones to do it on," Kaufman said. "I have one customer who owns a company and he gives the tickets to clients. It's become such an issue that he said, 'When I get my Blue Jackets rep on the phone I'll tell him I'm not doing this next year.' I can't find one person who says this is great."

Ticketmaster has been pushing to go to paperless tickets for several years to save money and increase security, but the service has had problems.

In August 2017, a Ticketmaster computer outage led to huge lines at at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, Atlanta’s Mercedez Benz Stadium, Sun Devil Stadium at Arizona State University, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York as fans were unable to use their cell phones. Earlier in 2017, another Ticketmaster outage at a U2 show in British Columbia kept fans stuck in line so long they missed the opening act, Mumford and Sons.

"What happens if you go to a game and you struggle to get a signal on your phone?" Kaufman said. "And what happens if your phone dies while you're there?"

The Blue Jackets say a test run of the system during the preseason went smoothly.

If a fan who comes to Nationwide Arena does not have a smart phone, or if that person's phone dies, the fan can go to the Will Call window at the arena and, as long as the tickets are on that person's account, they can have their tickets printed for them, the Blue Jackets representative said.

That doesn't leave all fans happy.

"I understand they want to go paperless and how they want to cut back on fraudulent tickets," Joseph said. "But this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You're not endearing yourself to your fan base. Ohio State certainly doesn't do that — I'm going to the game on Saturday and I've got my tickets in hand."

tferan@dispatch.com

@timferan