Verizon Arena pioneers paperless tickets (UALR Public Radio) - Take a look at the last ticket you saved from a theater performance, a concert, a major sporting event. Somewhere on the back in tiny print, it probably says Weldon, Williams and Lick. That's the name of a company in Fort Smith, Arkansas, that over the last one hundred years has become one of the biggest ticket printers in the world. That paper product, though, may be endangered at some venues - because of scalping.

There's only one person trying to sell tickets outside Verizon Arena tonight. He doesn't look like he's having much luck, either, probably because he has no physical tickets to offer.

This recent Miley Cyrus concert is all paperless - to get in, you have to present the credit card you used to buy the seats, and your I.D. It's similar to the paperless ticket check-in at airports. Anyone trying to use that guy's borrowed credit card will probably be out of luck.

Michael Marion, the manager of Verizon Arena, says the backlash from parents was brutal.

"I've been doing this 35 years, and I've never seen anything like it," Marion says.

The incident prompted an investigation by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, and a new law in Arkansas prohibiting sellers from posting tickets online before they actually go on sale. McDaniel says the Hannah Montana concert was a wake-up call.

"Parents will spend two and three thousand dollars if they have the money - and sometimes even if they don't - because they don't want to disappoint their child, and they don't want their kid to be the only one that doesn't get in," McDaniel says. "And then sometimes they find themselves being taken advantage of."

This time around, Miley Cyrus asked that her tour be all-paperless. Verizon Arena was one of the first venues to install the new Ticketmaster technology. Arena Manager Michael Marion says he's been using the paperless system for about a year, but usually only with the seats most valuable to scalpers.

"It's an ongoing battle, but we feel like it's worth it," Marion says. "Because for us, it gets the tickets in the hands of the fans and the people here in Arkansas at the price that the artist means for it to be, and not some jacked-up price that the scalper tries to get."

Marion worries that all-paperless ticket concerts may exclude people without credit cards. But any hiccups on concert day - like an expired credit card, or a request for a souvenir ticket - can usually be handled at the box office.

The ticket printer Weldon, Williams and Lick has a policy of not talking with reporters. So we don't know exactly how paperless ticketing is affecting them. But an industry association spokesperson says businesses are remolding themselves over time. Weldon, Williams and Lick is now a major source of parking decals for colleges and local governments.

As for the first all-paperless concert at Verizon Arena - it seems to be going smoothly. Linda Williams is taking her young daughter to see Miley, and she says the story now is very different from 2007.

"A lot of our friends couldn't get tickets, because of all the scalping going on, Williams says. "But this time it was extremely easy. We were running late, and look, we're in. Good to go!"

Ticketmaster is figuring out how to create a secondary market for paperless tickets. It's creating an online ticket-exchange system, with its own price controls, and fees that Ticketmaster will also keep.
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