81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone • Hacker News Board

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#71

Post by robin_reala » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #64

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though. The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a blind person / person with low vision without a smartphone these days: they’re a near-essential window into services that aren’t accessible though plain paper.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#72

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #64

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though. The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.

[deleted]

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#73

Post by graemep » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #62

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

> At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better. Perhaps. But in this case, they've moved to something worse. Digital tickets have their benefits, but paper tickets are still superior because they don't tie you into big tech relationships and don't require supporting infrastructure to work.

Paper also does not run out of battery or smash if you drop it.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#74

Post by tmp10423288442 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #64

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though. The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.

> “undue financial hardship”

If they have already moved away from paper tickets for everyone else, now there is financial hardship, not to mention the loss to the team's economic position from scalping. Also smartphones have supported usage by the blind for years, particularly on iOS.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#75

Post by TheGamerUncle » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #46

Molitor5901 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point. I'm surprised the box office cannot print it for him for a fee at Will Call, which might be the solution here.

No, it's not. If you are physically incapable of operating a piece of technology, the ADA covers reasonable accommodations for that. If you are simply unwilling to learn how to use a piece of technology, it doesn't and shouldn't cover that. Being a luddite is not a protected class.

I love technology but having to give money to google and apple should not be a reason with stop people from doing things that CLEARLY don't need technology.

Also that is not what luddite means, like come on even in the bastardization of the term, he is not precisely smashing the ticketing machines, he is just an old guy don't be such a redditor with this senior.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#76

Post by andrewla » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #66

andrewla wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we make things so that you don't need a smartphone? I don't think this is as trivial as you're making it out to be. Having a non-exfiltratable bearer token is really really hard. In order to present a zero-knowledge proof of the possession of a token you need to have some sort of challenge-response protocol. The simplest one, and the one in most common use (such as this) is a time-based method, where the shared k…

What? We sold tickets for literally decades upon decades before smartphones came out. Of course you can do it, it's already been done!

Decades upon decades of holograms and watermarks on tickets to make them unforgeable. But it keeps getting easier to forge them. Meanwhile ticket prices keep increasing (venue space is one of the last things that's truly scarce) and the incentives for forgery keep increasing.

Even if we could make them truly unforgeable, people generally want electronically transferrable tickets. How do you propose to do this?

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#77

Post by red_admiral » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

elevation wrote: post #25

We need to extend the ADA to protect people who are not technologically-abled.

Other people covered under ADA who might agree: partially sighted/blind people (yes there's screen readers and such but a piece of paper is often simpler to handle), people with reduced mobility or tremors in their hands, and probably more.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#78

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #64

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though. The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.

For that matter, he could/should look into filing an ADA complaint all the same.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#79

Post by mrweasel » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

There's an amusement park we like to go to. We get season passes, which normally means renewing the small plastic card we got the first year. They've switched to app only this year, with the option of getting a card, if for some reason you cannot or will not use the app. I believe there's a small fee for issuing the card.

I believe their reasoning is much the same. They have some types of tickets, which can technically be handed over to others and abused. Think weekend ticket, where you hand the tickets to someone else for them to use on Sunday, or tickets that can be converted to season passes, if you do it the same day.

Blaming scalping doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, because there was always the option of making the tickets and season passes non-transferable. There are other methods. Especially if you're only issuing paper tickets as an alternative, e.g. yes we will sell you a paper version, but understand that it is absolutely non-transferable and non-refundable.

Some people might not want to bring a phone to these types of events and venues, which I can completely understand, neither do I, but I can live with it. The thing that bugs me is the lack of an alternative, which isn't really that expensive and which most won't even use. Because to some, the app really don't provide value and in those cases they solely exists for the benefit of one company. If you're paying the price of season passes to pretty much anything these days, I think you're entitled to some small level of personalized service and customization.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#80

Post by ttfkam » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #64

crazygringo wrote: post #52

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

I don’t think this policy would pass muster under the ADA though. The guy might not be sufficiently disabled to qualify - but for example if you have a blind person without a smartphone, you can’t tell them they’re out of luck - because you can clearly reasonably accommodate them without causing “undue financial hardship” by giving them tickets at will-call.

Visually impaired people use smartphones too. If the app isn't supporting the accessibility features of the platform, it should still be held liable under the ADA.

(Unfortunately it won't as was found when Southwest Airlines was sued over this. Congress hasn't updated the ADA to include web sites since the ADA precedes the web and so it wasn't enumerated explicitly. Also unfortunately, the GOP who have never been huge fans of the ADA have blocked any attempts at patching that hole.)

But check out the settings on your iPhone/iPad or Android device. Whole sections dedicated to accessibility, especially for the visually impaired.