Beating the Ticket Tout problem once and for all!
UPDATE: Get the dk101.net new range of ticket tout t-shirts now available! Show your hate towards touts! - http://s.dk101.net/80328/
So, i'm sure you've all read my problems ordering tickets for Green Day thanks to ticket touting. This is an issue, which i'm sure many of you will agree, needs to be fixed! There's lots of different 'solutions' that companies have tried to solve this problem ranging from Limiting the amount of tickets per person to needing a utility bill when you go to a gig. However this isn't solving the problem. In the first case, ticket touts clearly just purchase less tickets on more cards! In the second case touts tend to just provide a utility bill when you purchase a ticket from them. Both of these 'solutions' do just add more effort to the legitimate purchases like myself.
So the solution has to be in our faces. Photo identification is required almost everywhere from Passports and Driving Licenses to a simple club membership card. So where is the problem with printing a photo of us onto our ticket?! Companies like ticketmaster already have a nice back ends for clients so they already have our name and other such details on file. So with a quick modification to the code we have something like the following...
Now the photo that's on my profile then gets printed directly on to my ticket. This would be done during the normal printing system so we don't have any issues with laminating and touts being able to remove the picture. Then through the post we get tickets that look like the following..
Right, so now we have a reasonably fool proof way of proving that I ordered the ticket, it has my face on it! There's a few provisos on this though. The picture on your ticket MUST be the one that was registered on your profile at the time of ordering. This would mean that touts couldn't simply replace the picture in the profile depending on who bought the ticket. The name of the person the ticket was ordered for would also be printed under the photo so extra proof of ID could also be asked for.
In the admin section of the ticket selling website we could have a list of all photos used previously, what tickets they were used for and a way to upload a new photo like the following...
Finally, this system would also mean it would be possible for you to remove the limit on ticket ordering. Ticketmaster could use people's profiles almost like a facebook friends list. This would mean Chris, Del, Feeney etc etc could add me as friends on ticket master. Once this has been done I am then free to order tickets for them through my account and card but their photo would be printed on their ticket.
Yes, this system would mean that if someone decides they cannot make a gig their ticket would be useless, but it should certainly cut down the number of tickets for sale on ebay and mean that the true fans can actually see bands they like without having to buy tickets for 2+ times the price from touts on ebay.
