By: Jessica Enns
Edited by: James Wen
Let’s all think back. Your parents surprise you with tickets to your local hockey team’s game. On a Saturday evening, you pile into the car, bundled up and cozy. Your mom hands you your ticket and says, “Make sure you don’t lose it.” Suddenly, that small piece of paper feels heavy in your hands. It matters to you. Your dad parks a kilometer away from the arena because there’s no parking nearby. As you walk toward the bright lights of the building, you check your pocket every few seconds, just to make sure the ticket hasn’t somehow slipped away. Inside, you wait patiently in line until it’s finally your turn. The scanner beeps. The ticket is handed back. It stays safely in your pocket for the rest of the night. When you get home, you place it in a box alongside ticket stubs from games, concerts, and events; each one holding the story of a specific memory, frozen in time.
Fast forward to now. You’re older, and your favourite band announces a tour. In three clicks, the tickets are yours. One more tap, and they live in your phone. Like most other things stored there, the ticket barely crosses your mind. On the night of the concert, you walk up to the scanner, hold out your phone, and continue on with your night. The ticket almost immediately disappears, forgotten like every other digital pass before it. I don’t quite remember when this change happened. Maybe it was just one of the many shifts that came with growing up. Or maybe it was a part of a larger transition, one driven less by age and more by necessity and convenience.
COVID-19 played a major role in creating this shift. Avoiding personal contact became a central priority, and reducing the transmission of disease was crucial. Despite many technological changes in medicine being made prior to 2020, the pandemic only accelerated these processes and they became implemented wherever possible. Statistics Canada reported significant increases in online shopping, online entertainment, and online communication during the height of the pandemic in 2022. Digital ticketing fit naturally into this moment, offering a contactless alternative that worked with the goals of public health and changing social expectations.
Beyond health concerns, environmental considerations also support the transition away from physical tickets. Considering the state of our current climate, reducing single-use waste feels more important than ever. To many people, a paper ticket is just more waste that can be eliminated. Digital ticketing reduces paper consumption, lowers carbon footprints, and limits energy used for printing and distribution. These benefits are meaningful, and it’s hard to argue against solutions that are more sustainable.
But the first thing that comes to mind for me is convenience. Digital tickets are almost impossible to lose. Once you buy it, they sit quietly in your email or wallet app, just waiting until their time to be used. With everything else we have to think about, one less physical item to keep track of feels like a relief.
Maybe this change is the result of all these factors. But as I’ve gotten older, my memory is starting to feel unreliable, and I miss these physical reminders for all of the exciting things I’ve done in my life. I miss having something tangible, something that stays exactly as it was when it mattered. A ticket stub doesn’t need to be updated or reloaded. It doesn’t disappear when the screen goes dark. It simply exists, holding a memory in place long after the event is over.
Image Citation: Gentry, J. Background Concert Ticket Stubs [Photograph]. PublicDomainPicture.net. https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=47242&picture=background-concert-ticket-stubs
References:
Statistics Canada. (2022, April 28). Canadians’ use of the Internet and digital technologies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2022004/article/00004-eng.htm
Ticket Gateway. (2023, August 11). Convenience Meets Sustainability: The Environmental Benefits of E-Tickets. Medium. https://medium.com/@ticketgateway10/convenience-meets-sustainability-the-environmental-benefits-of-e-tickets-8710566520c5