“Ting” chimes the iPod. “You’re good to go,” the ticket person said. This is the sound of a new process for ticketing at all school events called HomeTown Ticketing.

The Minnesota State High School League, of which Stillwater Area High School is a member, made the switch this school year to online ticketing and encouraged all members to follow suit. SAHS uses the app HomeTown Ticketing for all sporting and performing arts events within the district.

In past years, with paper ticketing people stood in two lines: one to purchase a paper ticket and another to get into the event. Lines could be extremely long at large events such as football games and homecoming. The process to enter an event became streamlined with the use of HomeTown Ticketing because there is only one line needed to enter an event.

“I think more people will come…since accessing tickets is so much easier,” senior Maggie Irwin said.

With this new program, the cost increased. HomeTown Ticketing charges a processing fee that is added when checking out. Next year, the activities office plans on raising the price of the ticket to cover the cost of the processing fee and to compensate for the prices rising for every type of event.

“For the last 20 years our conference ticket prices have not increased, and so this year what we chose to do is, we kept our ticket prices the same, but we pass the fees on to the public,” activities assistant Jacki Delahunt explained.

An additional factor to ticketing are the workers. HomeTown Ticketing has helped compensate for the lack of people that are willing to work the ticketing position at games or events.

“I don’t have to have five ticket sellers for a football game. I can get by with two. So it saves us a little bit of manpower, we can shift some of the workers to other places where they’re needed,” Activities Director Ricky Michel explained.

Furthermore, this new process of tickets allows the administrators to keep track of who exactly comes to the events. If the event is cancelled, the activities office is able to send out a mass messages through email, text, and even twitter to the people who bought tickets for the event.

Delahunt explained if there was “any reason to have anything be changed or delayed or time changed, it’s very quick and easy way to get a hold of everybody. Otherwise in the past they’d never know.”

With a large change in ticketing, there are also some changes as to how the technology for ticketing is used. HomeTown Ticketing has their own free app to scan tickets called the HomeTown Gate. As a way to make it easier for workers to scan tickets, the school has purchased six iPods to be used specifically for scanning tickets.

Michel said the cost of the iPod scanners is “minimal compared to, you know, the amount that we’re saving by not having as many ticket sellers at an event.”

Overall, the switch to online ticketing through HomeTown Ticketing has created a positive change for the events that take place at SAHS. Tickets for all events can be purchased at goponies.org.