AppleInsider Staff
Major League Baseball has been quick to adopt Apple's new Passbook digital ticketing system, and the league has been "floored" with the initial results.
Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB Advance Media, told MarketWatch that in an initial run of four teams for the final two weeks of the season, 1,500 e-ticket buyers chose to have their tickets delivered via Apple's Passbook for iOS 6. In all, 12 percent of e-ticket buyers opted to receive their tickets in Passbook.
"That adoption rate really floored us — there is no question our fans want digital tickets," Bowman said. "Fans can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity — and they never get lost or left at home."
MLB is one of the biggest partners with Apple for its new Passbook initiative. The use of Passbook for baseball tickets was demonstrated onstage by Apple iOS chief Scott Forstall last month.
In his demo at the iPhone 5 unveiling, Forstall accessed a ticket for a San Francisco Giants baseball game he had recently attended. In the onstage example, Forstall deleted the used ticket, which prompted the Passbook application to display the digital ticket running through a virtual paper shredder.
Ticketing support for select MLB teams has been available since the launch of iOS 6 last month through the free MLB.com At Bat application. Support is available through MLB Advanced Media for four clubs across the U.S.: the San Francisco Giants, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals.
MLB tickets through Passbook are driven by open technology from Tickets.com. The digital tickets in iOS 6 include customary information such as the game date, opponent, time, section, row and seat.
Fans can receive and store digital tickets after completing a purchase via the official MLB.com website or official club websites. Digital tickets with Passbook are also displayed on the iPhone's lock screen as a day-of-game reminder.
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Stephen Silver
50 Comments
I knew this was going to happen from the beginning. All the initial moans about "what is passbook good for?" And "no one supports it" will within a year's time be silenced as information like this continues to come out and Passbook support becomes ubiquitous. It will be less a question of who supports it and more a question of who doesn't. At that time all those who asked why Apple released an "unfinished product" will be silenced. In much the same way that iDevices infiltrated the workplace, iOS users will be the ones who demand passbook support from the vendors.
All I'm going to say (and I know I've said it before, sorry), is that I just don't "get" Passbook at all. I'm a smarter than average person and I work in tech and while I have read the explanations and do know how it's supposed to work more or less, I still don't "get it" in a visceral way. If I don't "get it" (to the point of actually being able to effectively use it in my daily life), then tens of thousands of others don't either. - It's counter-intuitive to have an app that is useless until linked with another app, that you have to find first, install, and then link. - It's just plain stupid to expect me to waste screens of real-estate to install apps just so they will show up in the passbook app. - Even if I did this, it's not clear at all what happens next or how to "link" the two since the "linking" is invisible and behind the scenes. - The kind of fools who salivate over a ten cent bargain are not generally the same people who buy expensive high-end smart phones. Not everyone is comfortable with hundreds of apps on their phone. Many people, like me, only install a few things that they actually need/want. I'm not going to install an app for every bargain bin in my neighbourhood just so I *might* get a crappy coupon one day. Until the day that some actual human in an actual store offers me a coupon that can be saved on my iPhone and actually tells me how to do it or does it for me, Passbook just isn't going to happen for me. I suspect that the vast majority of iPhone users are in the same boat. It's just one of those useless new apps that sits on your device that you know *might* be useful someday but for the time being is just taking up space. So you put it in that folder that everyone has on the last screen that contains all the apps that Apple's marketing department forces on us, that you can't get rid of but that don't actually do anything.
I love this, love Passbook, but 1,500 fans is 12%? Surely that is a typo?
Agree, but remember the option to "add to passbook" will be available via web, email, text, etc. So I don't think the app will need to be installed on your phone for that. I think.
I love this, love Passbook, but 1,500 fans is 12%? Surely that is a typo?
It's fans who are at the same time e-ticket buyers. I think 12% might be plausible.