Major League Soccer team DC United has launched a new app with a virtual currency that it hopes will incentivize season ticket holders to trade-in the tickets they don’t plan to use, rather than sell them on secondary markets.
The DC United app, which is powered by VenueNext, launched on iOS and Android last week. It enables fans to trade-in season tickets for Fan Allocation Money, or FAM. The in-app currency can then be exchanged for upgrades and unique fan experiences at the stadium, such as acquiring additional tickets to bring family and friends to matches, accessing all-inclusive club-level seats, and partaking in VIP experiences, such as pitch-side access during team warm ups.
When a season ticket holder trades their seats for FAM, the tickets are returned to the team, which can then resell those tickets to other fans. The team says this will help ensure that the arena remains as packed as possible during games.
DC United says it will use the app to provide fans with a “fully digital” mobile guest experience when its new stadium, Audi Field, opens on Jul. 14. The current version is just “phase . one” of the project, and new features that are customized to Audi Field will be added over time.
The app also comes with an entire in-arena ecommerce solution that enables fans to purchase game tickets, parking passes, as well as food and beverages for express pick-up. Fans can also watch exclusive team content through, check scores and real-time statistics, view line-ups, and receive information about the stadium.
“Our vision of an unparalleled fan experience will be realized with both a beautiful new state-of-the-art venue and an incredibly convenient way to experience it all from their phone,” said Tom Hunt, the team’s president of business operations, in a statement.
SportTechie Takeaway
Professional sports teams are using their apps to push fans toward mobile ticketing, which they see as a way to reduce fraud, gather data on the people attending home games, and appeal to younger fans who are much more likely to download an app rather than print out paper tickets. The NFL is even launching its own version of a secondary exchange, to keep tickets in the hands of the league and not floating around on secondary markets where teams lose control of value.
The Dallas Cowboys were one of the first NFL teams to experiment with mobile ticketing for the 2015-2016 season and now run a mobile-first operation. Their efforts were later followed by the NFL’s Chiefs, Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons. The New York Jets last season launched a mobile-based season-pass subscription service. This year’s College Football Playoff national title game in Atlanta was a mobile-only ticketing event, powered by Ticketmaster. Major League Baseball and Tickets.com have also partnered to enable contactless mobile entry for people with iPhones at a variety of ballparks.
DC United seems to have taken from the playbooks of these mobile ticketing veterans, as well as from the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights. The Knights, which made it to the Stanley Cup final this year in their inaugural season, attempted to curb attendance of away-team fans at home games during the playoffs with a digital ticketing program that offered season ticket holders cheaper seats that couldn’t be resold on StubHub.