German Football Charges Forward With e-Ticketing

摘要

It was three weeks before the first match of the season, and FC Cologne had not sent out any of the new electronic tickets to its 21,000 season ticket-holders. Fans were getting nervous. Some even went to the German football club's ticket office at the stadium, demanding to know where their tickets were. "It's really an emotional product, the season card," says Daniel Dauper, FC Cologne's card manager. "You can't imagine." That was during the summer of 2004. After a frenzy of activity, the club got the contactless season ticket cards in the mail in time—just barely. The club decided to reissue all of the cards this summer, at significant cost, to add an electronic purse. In the process it switched to a more experienced card vendor. And again, it had to rush. But Dauper chalks all this up to experience. After all, Cologne is the first football club in Germany to introduce contactless tickets, beating out the Hanover club by six months.