New technology solves soccer fan

segregation problem

By Anonymous

London, July 18th, 2003: Seatbooker, a UK technology company, said today, that the problem of separating fans of opposing clubs at football matches is a thing of the past. Using new Internet technology, clubs can decide who, when, and where in the stadium football goers can buy tickets, and then automate the entire sales and checking process.



New software introduced to sell tickets on the Internet, has been specially designed to deal with football hooliganism and ticket touting. Holding a database of customers and their previous ticket purchases, the software can instantly separate regular supporters from the casual ticket buyers, touts or supporters of other clubs. Using Internet technology means this can be faster and more reliable than other methods as well as lowering the clubs costs.



Pat Bernstein, CEO of Seatbooker gave an example. “Already, anyone can buy tickets on our customers’ websites; however, for the high demand fixtures, the club are able to set whole game or certain areas of the venue as available to members only. The software does all the security vetting. Now, we have introduced “loyalty based buying”. What this means is that for the really sensitive games, the club decides how many previous fixtures you must have been to in order to be eligible to buy. Again, the software does all the security vetting for you. This deals with almost all the issues of ticket touts, and segregation of the supporters.”



The software is already in use at Tottenham Hotspur, Blackburn Rovers and a number of other English and Scottish football clubs. The company is a major provider of online ticketing to Premier Rugby and is currently in discussion with a US based company for the addition of its technology in major US venues.



Pat Bernstein said, “In the US the security issues are less about segregation and more about touting or scalping as they call it. Here, the unique aspects of our technology help venues identify touts, prevent them buying and where appropriate, trace them for subsequent prosecution.”