As some artists – such as Placebo, Dave Chappelle or even Chris Rock – has been strictly forbidding smartphones during their shows, forcing viewers to place them in special bags, Ed Sheeran goes against the flow. As a matter of fact, to attend Ed Sheeran’s shows on July 29 and 30, 2022 at the Stade de France, smartphones are compulsory. And for good reason, the ticketing service for the shows is electronic only, available via a special and secure application. The goal? Fighting against fraud, black market and forged tickets (one remembers the fiasco of the Champions’ League final at the Stade de France too, where fake tickets were involved).
In concrete words, anyone who bought their tickets for one of the Ed Sheeran shows at the Stade de France is to get an email (by July 5) to download the Stade de France app, a secure tool developed for the show with the Tix’N Go ticketing service. This is on this very application, and only on this app, the day of the show, that spectators will get their e-tickets. The app does not allow screenshot. It is also said that each ticket holder will have to show the ticket on their smartphone. No one can pretend that their friend has all the tickets on their phones. There will be one ticket per phone. Only underaged people will be able to have their tickets on the purchaser’s phone.
If you cannot go to the concert, although e-tickets cannot be directly sent, you can yet resell them on the official ticketing service’s resale service.
With such a process – developed on such a large scale – we cannot help but wonder what about viewers with no smartphone. And also, about charging one’s phone. Although it is highly recommended to come with a fully charged phone (external batteries were banned within the stadium for the France-Denmark game on June 3), the app yet does not need Internet to work. And a special team will be there on D-Day to help viewers struggling with finding tickets on their phones.
Willing to keep affordable rates for his shows, Ed Sheeran has already been victim of the black market last year. As a matter of fact, during his previous show at the Stade de France in 2018, there were frauds on the black market, for any events of this size, highly expected by the public.
