“We are almost bored,” smiles a security guard in front of the Stade de France.
“Checking tickets is much more fluid with the app,” adds his colleague.
We had no invalid tickets.
"This is the first time that the Stadium has used this system, but now they will do this all the time", the first already thinks he knows.
This Friday evening, the Saint-Denis arena (Seine-Saint-Denis) inaugurated a new ticketing system: to come to the Ed Sheeran concert, spectators had to download the “Stade de France Tickets” application, on which they then received, a few days before D-Day, their ticket.
Read alsoEd Sheeran made the Stade de France vibrate solo: “It feels good to be at 80,000 and party”
Developed by the Stade de France and Securitix, the parent company of the Tix'n Go ticket office, this system makes it impossible to present counterfeit tickets at checkpoints and avoids resale on the black market.
Especially since the application prevents taking a screenshot of the ticket to pass it to another person.
All the tickets having been purchased on the Internet, the official ticket offices were able to notify spectators by email of the procedure to follow, and the holders of several tickets only had to send the addresses of their companions.
However, this device has a constraint: it is imperative to have a charged smartphone when arriving at the concert.
Only minors can show their ticket on an adult's phone.
“We are not afraid of having a counterfeit note”
This Friday, after Ed Sheeran thrilled the 80,000 or so spectators at the Stade de France with his romantic and electric pop, the fans in the aisles said they were delighted with this new system.
"It was super simple," say Alizée, 34, and Priscilla, 35.
Lauriane, 27, from Marseille, had bought her tickets last November for her and for her mother Christine, 63, on the Fnac.com site.
“We downloaded the app and received the tickets a few days ago.
I wasn't worried at all,” she says.
Christine, she delegated the operation to her daughter, in complete confidence: "I let her take care of everything," she laughs.
Tessie, 20, bluntly explains that she “loved the app”: “At least we are not afraid of having a fake ticket and we know where our ticket is, explains this music lover from Tours.
It's reassuring.
” Originally from Verdun (Meuse), Laurette, 38, and Grégory, 41, agree.
The couple only feared the unexpected battery shortage: "We were out and about all day so we often monitored the level of our battery", underlines Laurette.
The implementation of this unprecedented ticket office comes two months after the incidents which surrounded the Champions League final at the Stade de France on May 28: the evening was marked by crowd movements, intrusions and the closure of the enclosure to supporters with tickets.
An organizational fiasco for which the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin had implicated "30,000 to 40,000 English supporters", "either without a ticket or with falsified tickets".
It is therefore quite ironic to see a British singer decide to fight against ticket fraud at the Stade de Saint-Denis…
But in reality, the author of the hits "Shape of You", "Perfect" or "Bad Habits" had decided to use a secure ticket office long before the Champions League final.
As of last September, the organizer of his tour had detailed the device in Le Parisien.
He then specified that he had already been tested at Wembley (England) during Euro football matches.