The Cavaliers have no tickets

Although we’ve tried to be subtle about it over the life of this site, we’re pretty big fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It’s not just LeBron, or the fact we lived the first 20-some years of our life in the Cleveland/Akron area, raised on the Daughtery-Nance-Price trio of Cavs-ness.

No, it the innovations the team has managed. The marks they leave. Ted Stepien. All-orange uniforms. Trading All-Star level shooting guards for unproven Duke power forwards who flee to Europe under threat of playing for the 1989-era Clippers.

Whatever – that was all just filler. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is installing new technology this season that allows season ticket holders to come to the games without paper tickets.

The linked article compares Cavs Flashseats DOT COM to the e-tickets you can get for those airplane-thingies.

“It’s not every day that you have an opportunity to participate in something that can change the way an industry does business,” said Chad Estis, the Cavs’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

The team’s new “Flash Seats” technology – which Cavs owner Dan Gilbert owns and could sell to other teams – aims to control the resale of tickets and make it easier for season-ticket holders to transfer tickets. Along the way, the Cavs – not the scalpers – will profit on the resale of tickets.

Admission to The Q will be gained by electronically matching a ticket holder’s ID – either a driver’s license or credit card – to the one on the Flash Seats account.

Pretty impressive, and even cooler is that Mr. Gilbert owns the technology. This means he can finally live out his dream of being rich – all it’s gonna take is the rest of the sports franchises on Earth to adopt the thing.

Shouldn’t be too hard, considering it makes a ton of sense – it’s definitely one of those things that makes a ton of sense. Shit – we just said that twice in one sentence.

Oh well, the point here is that there never were paper tickets anyway. They’re cardstock. And while we’ll miss the old, crude ways of going to games, knowing that a few trees might be saved here and there…does nothing for us, because we hate trees, and crave a stark futureworld where everything is made of metal.

(Dan also is launching a multi-million dollar program to assist young entrepreneurs in DET. All you need is the right spirit and an idea, kids. We’ve submitted ours (BIRTHDAY CAKE: THE STORE), and also lied about living in DET.)