The paper game ticket is becoming a thing of the past. Here’s what teams are missing by going all-digital

Most MLB teams, including the Cubs, have gone to all-digital ticketing. You can get a paper Cubs ticket… sometimes… depending on the circumstances.

This began after the pandemic shut ballparks to fans in 2020. The last year the Cubs issued paper season tickets to fans was 2019, and Wrigley Field — plus most other MLB parks — went cashless in 2021 when parks re-opened to fans.

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Cashless was better for teams, who didn’t have to handle cash (and anecdotally, I heard reports that some rogue employees were stealing cash), and for fans, as long as you have your phone, you can’t forget your ticket.

There have been some glitches. Last September, as I reported here, the MLB Ballpark app got hacked and quite a number of fans, including Cubs fans, lost tickets as a result. Most, though not all, of those tickets were recovered, but as I suggested in that September 2025 article, MLB revamped the Ballpark app and began 2-factor authentication. That’s a must when you have apps with payment information and potentially thousands of dollars worth of tickets stored (as a season ticket holder would).

But here’s the thing. A game ticket isn’t just something that admits you to a stadium. It’s a tangible souvenir of your visit to the ballpark. I have literally thousands of game ticket stubs (and beginning in 2005, when the Cubs put barcodes on the tickets, full tickets) which create memories. Many Cubs season tickets over the years had really nice artistic designs, such as these from the Wrigley Field centennial year in 2014. Those are art, and well worth keeping.

Instead, your digital ticket disappears from the app after the game, so all you have is a record within the Ballpark app that you attended the game. True, you can put photos in the app for each game, but to me at least, a digital record isn’t quite the same as having an actual piece of paper, issued by the team, that you can keep in a scrapbook (people still do those, right?) or elsewhere. I actually had someone suggest that I “print a screenshot” of my digital ticket and… well, no, that’s not the same thing at all.

I bring all this up because of this article on this topic in The Athletic today. The article cites Montreal Expos fan Josée Tellier, who has kept binders of tickets from Expos games she attended, many from decades ago. One of them is from her first game, signed by Andre Dawson:

“Today, when people go to shows or games or whatever, they use their phones to take pictures and to get a memory of that moment, but at the time, who is going to the stadium with that camera? It wasn’t something we were doing at the time,” Tellier said. “So the ticket was the proof that you were there, that you felt the moment, that you saw that magic play.”

That 1986 ticket is her most cherished — not because it was from a championship or record-breaking game, but because it was her first. In 2022, she met Dawson, who signed the card.

“At the time, we didn’t have any money, and this ticket was proof that we were there,” Tellier said. “This little booklet with the ticket inside and my mom’s picture is my most prized possession.”

That’s exactly what I am talking about. These aren’t just pieces of paper that get you into a game, they create memories that can last a lifetime.

The Cubs will sell you a commemorative paper “ticket” for any game you want for $9, which is not unreasonable. I bought one for the combined no-hitter thrown by Shōta Imanaga, Nate Pearson and Porter Hodge in 2024. Here’s what that looks like:

It’s a tangible souvenir, but not quite the same thing as if I had an actual paper ticket that I had used to get into the game.

I was also fortunate enough to get a printed ticket at the Tokyo Dome last year. This one is for the exhibition game the Cubs played against the Yomiuri Giants. (There are two times listed — one is for the gates opening, the other for the start of the game.) This is a great souvenir of my trip to Japan last year.

Teams are getting really stingy about printing souvenir tickets for games now. I did manage to get one in Milwaukee for Game 5 of the Division Series last year — the Brewers will do it for $10.

But the Dodgers wouldn’t even do it for a 50-year season ticket holder:

Errol Segal, who’s been a Dodger fan for 50 years, said he received a notice before the season began that he can no longer get printed tickets.

Segal, 81, owns a recycling center in South LA and said he’ll likely be spending more time there now that the Dodgers have gone fully digital.

“I enjoy working,” Segal said. “I don’t feel my age.”

He said he went to Dodger Stadium Thursday and was able to buy paper tickets, but the team won’t let him get them for the entire season.

“If I had the tickets one year, five years, 10 years, that’s another story,” Segal said. “50 years I’ve had these tickets. They threw me under the bus.”

Segal doesn’t use a smartphone, and I would think you wouldn’t have to buy a smartphone just to go to a sporting event. Apparently the Dodgers disagree.

I get why teams want to do this. Saves printing costs. Makes it easy to have tickets in one place. Oh, and by putting them in the Ballpark app, where you have to log in, teams now know exactly who is using every ticket to every game — data that is useful to them when (for example) setting dynamic pricing.

Incidentally, there is one way for you to create memories for yourself within the Ballpark app, if you don’t mind those memories being digital. The app has a database of games going back to 1901. To find this, click on “Profile” at the bottom of the app, it should show “My History,” all the games you have checked into via the app. Click on the arrow at the right, it will take you to a page showing all your games. Hit the + and you’ll see a screen where you can “Add Past Games.” It took me a while, but I got all my past games in there. Fun and interesting… but still not quite the same as having a paper ticket.

As for Josée Tellier?

In Montreal, with no Expos tickets, print or digital, Tellier goes to Montreal Canadiens games, QR code in hand.

“I really wish we would go back to paper tickets,” she said. Tellier recalled how once, she asked a stadium for the printed version.

They gave her an 8 x 11 printed sheet of paper of her digital ticket.

Like I said… that’s not quite the same. How do you feel about all-electronic ticketing?