Friday's Bills-Panthers preseason game saw the "clunky dawn of a digital era of ticketing" at Bank of America Stadium, as the Charlotte franchise is moving to fully mobile ticketing for this season, according to Teo Armus of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. Phone glitches and a "complicated ticket transfer process" left many fans "confused, frustrated and nostalgic for the days of paper tickets, as they hassled with apps, sought out orange-shirted customer service agents and waited in endless lines before making it inside." Friday's exhibition featured "long lines of Panthers fans, phones in hand, clustered around customer service or small tents that had specifically been designated to assist ticket-holders with the mobile process." First-time attendees and long-time fans alike said that they "had trouble loading the Ticketmaster site and logging into the Panthers app -- both of which appeared to be necessary to get inside the stadium." Some fans reported "waiting up to 20 minutes at the front of the line before bar codes could be scanned off their phones," while others said that security guards had "essentially 'given up' and just started letting people inside the stadium" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 8/18).
