The pandemic has served to hasten the move across sports to digital ticketing. Tickets at Georgia and other schools will be delivered to and managed on the ticketholder’s phone. From a public health standpoint it makes sense. Digital tickets are contactless at the gate, and selling/transferring tickets on the secondary market doesn’t require a face-to-face meeting.

It’s necessary but unfortunate that the days are numbered for the paper ticket. The arrival of the sheet of season tickets in August was a day many fans anticipated. Each year’s design was a little different and more elaborate. The bigger point is that the ticket was a tangible memento of the game and our presence at it.

I was reminded of Scott Duvall’s (of the Waitin’ Since Last Saturday podcast) table project that showcased his collection of ticket stubs. You can point to any spot on the table and dive into the history, stats, stories, and memories represented by that ticket. I expect many of us have a collection of stubs whether tucked away in a box in the closet or even turned into a showcase like Duvall’s. Most of the tickets are run-of-the-mill home game tickets, but the 2007 Blackout game or the 2013 LSU game is worth highlighting. Maybe there’s a special place for that Rose Bowl or Notre Dame ticket. That 2002 Alabama or 1997 Florida game? That’s in there too.

As Duvall predicted, “the proliferation of electronic and print-at-home tickets will surely slow the pace of collecting more (stubs.)” That proliferation hit the afterburners this year, and there’s no going back. There are too many benefits to the issuer to go digital: digital tickets are harder to counterfeit, easier and cheaper to produce and deliver, and they can be tied to a team-managed gameday experience.

Pro teams are well out in front of this trend. Tickets are tied to a team app that manages everything from parking to concessions to movement throughout the arena or stadium. Alabama made news last year for using this location tracking to monitor how many students stayed until the bitter end.

Once tickets and the gameday experience are routed through a team-controlled app, marketers will have plenty of data to mine. As the CEO of the group that owns Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium put it, “I will know when you come in, and what you buy and when.” That sounds more menacing than it’s meant to, but the truth is that there’s a lot of valuable information wrapped up in the preferences and behaviors of top-dollar customers. As Georgia caters more to Magill-level fans and seeks to move more fans into that tier, data is key to reaching those people.

For now it’s just ticketing that’s moving to the digital platform. It won’t be seamless; older and lower-income fans might not have the technology to use these tickets, and accommodations will have to be considered. During the pandemic it might mean that some people are unable to attend games. For those of us who have that box of stubs, we won’t be adding much to it. Sports fans are still sports fans, and our deep attachment to nostalgia won’t disappear. We’ll just need something a little less tangible to trigger it.