For as long as I’ve worked with na­tion­al foot­ball teams, the pe­ri­od when play­ers and staff are just about re­ceiv­ing their com­pli­men­ta­ry game tick­ets which they now have to hus­tle to pass over to their friends or loved ones has al­ways a been part of the pre-game rou­tine.

And yes, it has posed is­sues in the past where, es­pe­cial­ly for the big match­es, World Cup qual­i­fiers and even past Gold Cup cam­paigns, play­ers who usu­al­ly re­ceive their tick­ets from the host or­gan­i­sa­tion no more than two days or in some cas­es a day be­fore match day have to make late arrange­ments for pick ups, some­times hav­ing to leave at the ho­tel re­cep­tion or at the venue se­cu­ri­ty.

This is all be­com­ing some­thing of the past, well at least for in­ter­na­tion­al events and hope­ful­ly the new sys­tem will con­tin­ue to catch on in T&T, not just at Car­ni­val fetes but for pop­u­lar sport­ing events.

At Gold Cup 2021, all teams have been able to dis­trib­ute tick­ets dig­i­tal­ly ei­ther via emails or mo­bile tex­ting. This now means that event less than ten min­utes be­fore kick off you can safe­ly pro­vide some­one with a game tick­et with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about how they're go­ing to man­u­al­ly have the tick­et in hand to get through the gates.

Re­al­is­ing that they are bat­tling against the com­fort of fans’ homes, pro­fes­sion­al teams and pro­mot­ers are putting an in­cred­i­ble amount of time, ef­fort and mon­ey in­to mak­ing their game-day ex­pe­ri­ences bet­ter than ever.

And while clubs con­sid­er the lat­est and great­est wow-fac­tors for their venues, they are spend­ing some time think­ing about how to in­crease fan sat­is­fac­tion even be­fore they get to the venue — with the tick­et pur­chase.

Tick­ets rep­re­sent a key start­ing point for the fan-team re­la­tion­ship, and the ways in which tick­ets are pur­chased and man­aged can make a big im­pact on the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­search has shown that five mil­lion con­sumers pay for and re­ceive fraud­u­lent con­cert, sport­ing event and theme park tick­ets every year in North Amer­i­ca, cost­ing the live en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try an av­er­age of US$4 mil­lion per month.

If the wrong peo­ple get their hands on your fans’ tick­ets, or even im­ages of your fans’ tick­ets, they can eas­i­ly copy them and slap ex­act same bar codes on­to their own home­made ver­sions.

But with dig­i­tal tick­ets, par­tic­u­lar­ly ID-based dig­i­tal tick­ets, or­gan­is­ers can great­ly re­duce their wor­ries by al­low­ing fans to man­age their tick­ets through a pro­tect­ed on­line ac­count. If any­thing should hap­pen to their tick­ets, your team can ze­ro in on the is­sue and ad­dress their ques­tions or con­cerns quick­ly. Dig­i­tal tick­ets make it much more dif­fi­cult for scalpers to scam your cus­tomers.

Dig­i­tal tick­ets al­so pro­vide fans with the ease and flex­i­bil­i­ty they need on game-day, when they have many oth­er things on their minds like trans­porta­tion, park­ing, find­ing a place to eat, get­ting to the game on-time, etc every­one in the group can en­ter the venue at their own leisure.

So while tick­ets were once me­men­tos, col­lect­ed like pho­tographs and saved in scrap­books. They are now bar codes on our phones — con­ve­nient as heck and im­pos­si­ble to lose.

All com­pa­nies and or­gan­i­sa­tions that in­cor­po­rate dig­i­tal tick­et­ing can al­so re­ceive mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion and valu­able in­for­ma­tion to help them bet­ter eval­u­ate and serve their clients and fans. The da­ta re­ceived can give in­sight to the buy­er’s in­ter­est, pur­chas­ing pat­terns, and loy­al­ty to spe­cif­ic brands, which can lead to ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing tac­tics.

Thanks to e-com­merce and an at­tach­ment to mo­bile de­vices, pur­chas­ing and re­triev­ing tick­ets through e-tick­et com­pa­nies can be done at the touch of a but­ton, and is on­ly ex­pect­ed to be­come more preva­lent in the sport­ing world.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com