An App That Moves Sports Fans to Better Seats

&#62; "<i>A fan logs into the app, which determines through geolocation the user's exact position within the venue...</i>"<p>In terms of the indoor venues/stadiums/etc. I have ever been to (<i>honestly, quite a few</i>), I ALWAYS have absolutely HORRIBLE reception on my iPhone (<i>AT&#38;T</i>). I feel like this could be a massive issue for this sort of app. How can I use it, if it can't even figure out where I am or display the data inside the venue?<p><i>Possible solution:</i> It would be nice if the venues that they teamed up with started offering free WIFI to help with this problem of poor reception or no data. Almost always, the venues have WIFI, but it is password protected. Maybe there are security concerns for having public WIFI at places like this that I am unaware of?<p><i>EDIT:</i> I will also add more of a "real world" example of this. When I use Foursquare, I always have to "check-in" outside of the venue, because it can't even find where I am when I'm inside. Luckily, Foursquare's model allows you to do these "check-in's" manually (<i>by searching</i>), or before/after you attend the event. I think that is why they can get away with it, unlike an app like this. It seems like a big problem they would need to figure out before they launch.

To me, this is similar to the music industry/pirating example. Find a black market, go to the source of the problem, improve the experience so that users will choose your legal method as the best alternative. In music/movies, it's providing easy-to-access, high quality streams and downloads; here it's providing a way to improve your experience at the ballpark.<p>Finding the right prices will be key, and take some time, but even less than optimal fee (from the stadium's perspective) will recoup some of the otherwise lost revenue.<p>How much can stadiums realistically expect to earn a night? Several thousand?

This is a great idea, but it's bad news for me if it picks p at the stadiums I go to. I am always one of those "seat pirates" and with the app, the situation for me will change for the worse: instead of getting cheap tickets and then switching to a $200+ seat for free, I would have to pay for this from now on.

There seem to be a couple of these services popping up. This one (<a href="http://www.findexp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.findexp.com/</a>) services the Braves games at Turner Field in Atlanta. I can't really see more than one of these businesses taking off and I would think Ticketmaster would get involved if it proves lucrative (either by integrating it into their own app or acquiring one of these companies).

<i>the fee may actually be lower than the difference in ticket price</i><p>Isn't the main point of getting a cheap ticket and then moving to a more expensive one to not pay the price of an expensive ticket?

This model works pretty well if you have plenty of empty seats, this could be a problem for fans who come a little bit late to the game. How do you handle fans that come late to a game?<p>Last year, I went to a baseball game a few innings late (maybe 2nd inning), how do you determine the time at which point to sell the seat? I would be upset if I paid $64+ bucks per ticket to have my seats sold based on getting to the stadium a little late.

Wow, it's nice to see that these guys are still going. They posted here a while ago, about not getting into Y Combinator, but that clearly didn't stop them.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2507662" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2507662</a><p>I think it's an interesting read, and it puts things in perspective.

Makes me think of the not-so-fun idea that stadiums would need to prevent "seat pirates." Ushers get an app that indicates if there is a butt in a seat for a ticket that was never used. They just need a sensor on the seat to indicate the status.<p>Much easier to enforce when you don't have to ask people to see their tickets. Everyone hates that.