UBC students’ paperless ticket- purchasing app a prizewinner
A group of University of B. C. students has been internationally recognized for developing a paperless ticketing app they hope will one day challenge Ticketmaster.
The free app, called goodnights, allows users to purchase tickets for an event by scanning a QR code — which could be on a poster, a flyer or a Facebook page — with a smartphone. Ticket information appears on the phone and users scan a credit card to pay. The app then produces a digital ticket which is scanned by venue staff when the user arrives, explained UBC commerce student Michael Moll, who is one of the developers.
“So when you show up to an event, you don’t actually have to think about the will- call line or removing your credit card and all those things to verify who you are,” Moll said, adding that goodnights charges a service fee of eight per cent of the ticket cost.
The app provides venue staff with a digital list of all the people attending, so if someone forgets their smartphone or the battery runs out, they need only produce photo ID, Moll added.
Moll and colleagues Jeff Blake, Justin Locke and James Hinton won’t be giving Ticketmaster a run for its money any time soon. Ticketmaster is the exclusive distributor for Rogers Arena, where many of Vancouver’s biggest events are held, so the goodnights team will focus on small- and medium- sized venues that don’t have proprietary software and aren’t locked into contracts, Moll said.
“The great thing about music and events is there’s so many niches, there’s so many venues.”
Moll, Blake and Locke, representing UBC, took first prize at an international university appbuilding competition held in Barcelona earlier this month.
Goodnights’ potential to tap into the lucrative ticket resale market and redistribute some of that money from scalpers to artists is what Moll said gave his team the edge at the competition.
Goodnights allows users to resell tickets by emailing the QR code to the person they want to sell it to, or posting the code on websites such as Facebook or Craigslist and naming their price. Anyone wishing to purchase the ticket simply scans the code from the website and makes the purchase. Goodnights coordinates the financial transaction, eliminating the need for the parties to meet in person, Moll explained.
However, if a user tries to sell a ticket at a markup, goodnights takes some of that profit and redistributes it to the artist and the venue, Moll said, adding that this is an important difference from Ticketmaster, which redirects users to a resale site when an event is sold out.
“The reason that ticket is going to that value is because of the artist, because of the venue, because of the event, not because of the scalpers.”
This represents a new revenue stream for artists, Moll said. Goodnights also allows artists to market tickets directly to their fans through social media, by posting a QR code on their Facebook wall or Twitter feed.
Moll and his colleagues are seeking early stage funding to further develop goodnights and promote it in Vancouver.
The app is available for Apple and Android mobile devices and the group plans to develop a web version of goodnights that Blackberry users could access through a computer, Moll said.