This coming basketball season, fans of the Miami Heat won’t need to print out their tickets to home games. In fact, the Heat won’t accept paper tickets at all.
Instead, people flocking to the Heat’s waterfront home court, AmericanAirlines Arena, will use their smartphones to access the venue, the Heat announced. Tickets will be available to fans via the Heat app on the App Store and Google Play Store. And if a smartphone isn’t available or doesn’t work, fans can visit a ticket center at the arena and show a valid ID.
“All of our fans are used to this on-demand, technology-driven interaction,” Matthew Jafarian, vice president of digital strategy and innovation for the Heat, told SportTechie. “We’re bringing that same ideology over to the Miami Heat. We want it to be digital and seamless for fans to get into the arena, as well as do other things.”
Those other things Jafarian mentioned are plenty: Just within the app, fans can buy, transfer, and view tickets. They can also look up scores, the team schedule, stats and Heat-exclusive content. The app also has mobile wallet functionality supported by PayPal and American Express, allowing fans to pay for arena merchandise and concessions and reap rewards, as well as use a dedicated line at points of sale within the arena.
Soon, the app will have another function — the Heat are currently installing WaitTime, with monitors and cameras already in place on the 100 level of AmericanAirlines Arena to inform fans about concessions and restroom lines, Jafarian told SportTechie.
Even with all of those functions, “you have to focus on the experience,” Jafarian said. To that end, the Heat were one of the first teams to use the digital acceleration lab created by BeyondCurious and Built.io. The accelerator helped Jafarian and his team view the app from the fan’s perspective and learned how to make it as user-friendly as possible. The initial result: one in three fans used mobile entry during the 2016-17 season, a 200 percent increase from the 2015-16 season.
As for the potential worry among fans that they’ll lose out on a potential souvenir in the form of a printed ticket to a milestone game or championship, Heat chief marketing officer Michael McCullough said that there are other souvenirs the Heat offer fans. The Heat have not printed hard-copy tickets for a number of years, he explained.
Another advantage of mobile-only tickets is security. Simply put, it’s much harder for a potential thief to steal or duplicate a mobile ticket, and fans don’t have to worry about leaving a paper ticket at home. Fans can transfer tickets to friends using just their name and email. Additionally, fans who bought their tickets on Ticketmaster can simply log into their account within the Heat app, according to the website.
Orlando City FC implemented a similar system, Ticketmaster’s “Presence,” and has reported that ticket fraud at its stadium has been eliminated completely. The Heat are using technology by Ticketmaster that precedes Presence, but are considering upgrading to the new system as it is further developed, Lorenzo Butler, a Heat communications manager, told SportTechie in an email.
Clearly, Jafarian, McCullough, and their teams are moving the Heat in the direction of catering completely to the fan experience, not just through in-game promotions and the Heat basketball product, but also by making it easier and more efficient to get to the game in the first place. This winter, Jafarian said he wants to introduce a system that would send fans customized messages based on their demographics.
“We want to be able to send exclusive messaging based on who you are. If you are a family of four, I want to be able to give you relevant content that only a family of four would care about versus a single young professional,” Jafarian said. “We have personalized experiences around who you are.”