Goodbye to the Ticket Line

Computers are bringing the box office as close as your telephone

Queuing for hours in the subfreezing cold to buy a pair of hard-to-get tickets may have once been a mark of theatergoing dedication. But increasingly, it is merely a sign that you are behind the times. The old-fashioned box office has, by and large, gone the way of the pinball machine and the flesh-and-blood bank teller: computers have moved in. Today ordering tickets for everything from Broadway shows to a Styx concert often requires nothing more arduous than picking up the phone and reading numbers off a credit card.

Ticket selling entered the computer age in 1967, when Ticketron (then known as Ticket Reservation Systems) opened its first neighborhood outlets in New York City. This year the company expects to sell 55 million tickets through its network of 1,200 nationwide outlets and a growing charge-by-phone operation. Meanwhile, new competitors and services are springing up at a rapid pace. A phone call can now get you tickets to museum shows, an evening at New York's Studio 54 disco, a spot at one of California's crowded campsites, or a seat at the Educational Testing Service's next Graduate Record Examination.

Other signs of the times:

> Chargit, the nation's first large-scale ticket-by-phone service, has expanded from a mom-and-pop ticket booth in Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station to a 24-hour computerized phone operation that will sell close to 3 million tickets this year, many via its toll-free 800 number. In addition to booking Broadway and off-Broadway shows, sports and other live events, Chargit is trying to spread ticket-by-phone fever to movies. It has already offered phone reservations to such films as Return of the Jedi and Sophie's Choice.

>In Los Angeles, a full-blown computer-ticket war broke out earlier this year when a scrappy newcomer called Ticketmaster breezed into town and supplanted Ticketron at several key venues, including the Los Angeles Forum. Ticketmaster takes reservations both by phone and through ticket outlets, and it has just moved the computer-ticket revolution an intriguing step further. For an extra $15 to $25, customers can get their ducats delivered to their door.

> Computer-ticket competition heated up in New York City this fall when Ticket World, a reservation service operating in Detroit, moved into the New York market. It has computerized the box offices of several Broadway shows, and is linking them to more than 70 area locations. And the nation's largest chain of legitimate theaters, the Shubert Organization, has just installed a ticket-by-phone service for all 16 of its Broadway houses, and is extending it to such cities as Boston and Chicago as well.

For customers, the convenience of ordering seats by phone is only slightly tempered by the drawbacks: the service charge typically ranges from $1.50 to $2.50 a ticket, and, in most cases, specific seats cannot be guaranteed over the phone. Instead, the customer is promised the "best available" seat, as determined by--what else?--the computer.

For theater and arena operators, however, the advent of computerized ticketing has been a boon. In a 1980 survey taken for the League of New York Theaters and Producers, 39% of the respondents said that charge-by-phone services made them more likely to attend a Broadway show. And attendance at rock concerts received an undoubted boost from the proliferation of Ticketron outlets during the 1970s. Says Ticketmaster Chairman Fred Rosen: "Our goal is to make ticket buying as convenient as possible. And the telephone is the ultimate convenience."