Movie Tickets Without the Ticket

Jan. 20, 2006 — -- A small technology company in the Midwest called MobilRelay has teamed with one of the most progressive movie theater chains in the region to make going to the movies a little easier.

Mobile Box Office lets moviegoers look up movies and showtimes, and then lets them purchase tickets using a Web-enabled cell phone. Not only can patrons buy their tickets through their phones, but the device actually becomes the ticket.

"Once you enter in your credit card information and your mobile phone number, you'll receive a text message that will contain a link to your tickets," said MobilRelay President Thomas Beals. "When you access the text message, it brings up a bar code and you present that bar code to the usher at the theater."

It's an innovative approach that many hope will get film lovers back in theaters after a year of lackluster box-office revenues.

At Emagine Theatres in Michigan, moviegoers can now bypass the lines, ignore the ticket windows and advance directly to their seats using just their cell phones.

"You go to MBO.com on your phone, and then you browse and find the movie you want to see and then proceed to purchase the ticket," said Beals.

From there, customers enter a credit card to pay for the ticket, and in exchange receive a text message that links them to a bar code. There's a $1 fee, which Beals said is comparable to what similar online services charge.

But once you have your text message, just flip open your phone and allow the usher to scan the bar code on the screen, and the only thing you'll have to wait in line for is candy -- and maybe the bathroom.

The bar code isn't saved on your phone, but on a server maintained by MobilRelay and that's accessible through the text message received after buying the ticket.

"If your battery were to go dead or something, if the actual ticket resided only on your phone, it would be a very cumbersome process to try to retrieve those tickets again," explained Beals. "What we do is we actually host the tickets, and then you can use any Web-enabled phone to retrieve those tickets."

Ease of use, convenience and reliability are what Beals thinks will make Mobile Box Office the next big thing.

And he's not the only one.

"When I first heard about the idea I was just blown away," said advertising guru Gary Topolewski.

Topolewski -- who has worked on campaigns for Apple and major U.S. car manufacturers, and launched XM Satellite Radio -- said the company and technology are as forward-thinking as satellite radio was in the early '90s.

"It's really exciting to get in on the ground floor of something like this," he said. "When you start thinking about the possible applications for this stuff, it's just mind-blowing."

Movies, sporting events, concerts or any other ticketed event would be a no-brainer, said Tolopewski, but there are further applications that he said are virtually limitless.

Tolopewski said that although he can't divulge any details, there has been a huge response from the media, theater owners and others interested in seeing how things play out.

Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel for the National Association of Theatre Owners, said that with box-office numbers not what they could be, his group welcomes the advent of the technology.

"Anything that makes it easier to get to the movies is a good thing," he said.

The technology behind MBO was developed in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, where Beals -- the 25-year-old founder and president of MobilRelay -- believed mobile technology was underused.

"When you think about what people consider to be data service in the mobile industry, it's centered around ring tones and wallpapers and video games and things like that," said Beals."Whereas this presents a new type of service that has real-world applications to it."

According to industry analysts, Beals' MBO is part of a larger trend, one that's in its infancy here but is catching on with the nation's youth.

"There's a certain portion of the market that's using their phone for things other than voice, but it's generally an under-25 market that's really open to new applications on a cell phone," said Linda Barabee, an analyst for the Yankee Group. "There's sort of a behavioral change that needs to happen within the U.S. consumer market for these types of things to work."

Barabee said educating consumers on not just how to use the service but about its existence is the first step. Getting retailers to invest in the necessary equipment to implement the technology could also present a challenge.

Despite that, Barabee said with about 200 million cell phones in the United States and 70 percent of Americans using them, services like MBO represent the future of cell phone use.