WW&L Enters Souvenir Ticket Licensing Agreement with MLB
Paperless tickets let fans have a contact-free experience. Souvenir tickets ensure they don’t lose touch with their beloved team.
Weldon, Williams & Lick (WW&L) printed their first ticket at the turn of the century – the 20th century. Since then, WW&L has printed every form of admission and access control, adding in the digital infrastructure necessary to manage 21st century RFID-enabled building and venue access, parking management and credentialing.
WW&L can now provide souvenir tickets directly to fans of all 30 teams in Major League Baseball, under an official licensing agreement announced this week.
“Ticket stubs are an iconic souvenir from sporting events,” says WW&L’s marketing director Laura Skulman. “People will save the ticket stub because the game has personal meaning – checking a historic field off their bucket list or a first date – or because the game wrote itself into baseball history with a no-hitter or pennant-clinching walk-off home run. People display souvenirs on their desks, framed on the wall, in scrapbooks… anywhere they want to remember and maybe show off that one time they were there.”
But what happens in a post-ticket stub world?
Teams and venues from across the sports industry have been shifting towards paperless tickets for the last decade. Digital ticketing reduces the risk of fraud, inhibits unauthorized resale, is environmentally friendly and creates more digital engagement between the fan and the team via the team or league app. They’re also harder to lose or leave on the counter when you head out for the game!
The trend towards digital-only ticketing was already accelerating when COVID-19 forced sports and most other venues to go all-out towards a contact-less and paperless experience.
These benefits came at the expense of a traditional piece of memorabilia and connection between the fan and the club.
“Collecting baseball cards, wearing your baseball team’s baseball cap, attending a Major League Baseball game is all part of a fan’s experience. For many attending MLB baseball games, part of that experience is the souvenir ticket they get to keep. Every game attended, every ticket has a story. Direct Souvenir allows the fan to get that souvenir ticket, that memory and that connection to their story,” said Steve Lensing, Sales Manager of WWL.
Souvenir tickets put a piece of that experience back in the fan’s hand. For the teams, souvenir tickets provide an additional source of revenue, sponsorship activation and brand projection. “Companies can include souvenir tickets as part of the swag bag when they are hosting clients or prospects at a game. Teams can send them out to season ticket holders. Team foundations can use them for fundraisers. Or fans can simply buy them at the point of sale.”
The Arizona Diamondbacks are the first team to take advantage of this opportunity under the new agreement. Other organizations such as the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Colorado Rockies have provided a similar Souvenir Ticket option in the past through other WW&L Direct Souvenir offerings.
With over 200 years of combined history (WW&L and MLB were founded just five years apart), these two are well-suited to take the next step in fan engagement together, by never forgetting what matters to the fans in the seats.
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