iOS 6 is out, and companies are starting to reveal their plans for Passbook, Apple's location-aware electronic ticketing system that stores, syncs, and displays passes, tickets, gift cards, coupons, and more. We spoke with StubHub about their plans to use Passbook, starting with the football teams at the University of Texas, and Purdue University, in Indiana.
Once you buy tickets in the StubHub app, or in Mobile Safari (shown here), just tap Add to Passbook.
StubHub has an iOS app, as well as a mobile version of its website (m.stubhub.com), and once the app is updated, if you buy tickets to a Texas or Purdue football game on an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6, you'll get the option to have the ticket added to Passbook. They'll sync across devices (if you have Passbook syncing enabled in Settings > iCloud), and when you approach the stadium, boom, up pop the tickets on your lock screen, ready to be scanned at the ticket gates, using scanners that StubHub helped the universities install.
Bingo, a Passbook ticket, ready to be scanned at the gate. Go, Boilermakers!
This isn't the first time StubHub users have been able to have tickets scanned from their device's screens. AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, allows ticketholders to have their ticket barcodes scanned off mobile screens at certain gates, but you have to open the StubHub app or mobile website, go to My Orders, pull up your tickets, and have the barcode scanned. It certainly works, but with the tighter integration of Passcode into iOS (not to mention the popularity of Apple devices), StubHub senior director of software engineering Mehdi Ghazizadeh thinks the popularity of paperless event tickets is about to really take off.
"We see a great benefit in Apple's platform -- our consumers have been asking for this funcitonality." Ghazizadeh said. "We are seeing over 20 percent of our traffic coming from mobile. The consumer is moving in this direction, the industry is moving in this direction, and we are going to continue to increase our investment in mobile."
The company plans to roll out Passbook to more partners over time, as venues continue to update their technology. StubHub provides the ticketing platform for 90-plus percent of college athletics, Ghizizadeh said, plus pro sports, concerts, and other big events.
