They’ve been widely used in professional baseball, and we’re now seeing a Gopher Pass, a mobile ticket managed via smartphone, unveiled for University of Minnesota football games at TCF Bank Stadium.
Priced at $199.96, the Gopher Passwill get you into all seven 2019 Golden Gopher home football games at TCF Bank Stadium. Many Major League Baseball and some Minor League Baseball teams have implemented mobile passes, online-only tickets that basically grants you SRO rights for all home games in a specific period. In 2019 the Minnesota Twins introduced a beefed-up Twins Pass that combines a mobile pass with a season pass. For a flat fee, a buyer can access Target Field for up to 79 games (two certain sellouts are excluded) and are sold at three different levels: $894 for a lower-level seat, $494 for an upper-deck seat and $294 with no seat at all (your standard SRO ticket). The Twins Passes are billed monthly. Fans can request a seat via a phone app a week before a game or just head to Target Field and wing it. Currently the seats are randomly allocated, but a group can request adjacent seats.
The same principle is used in the Gopher Pass, where fans are guaranteed admission to a University of Minnesota game, but are not guaranteed the same fixed seats–or even a seat in the case of a sellout. They will have a digital ticket delivered to their smartphone via a text message prior to each game. Fans will then be able to manage their ticket from their phone and will scan their digital ticket to gain entry into TCF Bank Stadium.
The Gopher Pass allows for fans to link their accounts with other Gopher Pass users as well, which means those individuals will receive assigned locations together. There is also an option that allows fans to buy guest tickets and then transfer them.