Penn State will become the first college to utilize the full Ticketmaster Presence digital ticketing and venue access control platform. New this season for Penn State will be the addition of SafeTix technology that uniquely ties each ticket to a student’s identity and account.

In 2018, Penn State Athletics first announced it would fully transition to digital ticketing for football in time for the 2019 season, with all other Penn State Athletics venues following suit.

In a statement from Ticketmaster, Penn State's deployment of Ticketmaster Presence in five of its athletic facilities made it the first campus eligible to launch the SafeTix solution. Penn State will now leverage SafeTix for all students entering the home football games this season.

In addition to making gamedays more convenient, digital ticketing at Penn State is also intended to help mitigate fraud. With SafeTix, each ticket is uniquely tied to the student’s identity and account and is presented for entry as a dynamically changing encrypted barcode. Students can also save tickets in their mobile wallet and be granted access through an NFC-enabled tap and go action.

The move to digital tickets will end students swiping their Penn State ID card at the gate, and will instead see students use their smartphones to present their encrypted barcodes for entry. Ticketmaster’s changes will only apply to student tickets and single-game seats available on the resale market.

Digital ticketing will also spell an end to print-at-home PDF tickets, which will no longer be accepted for entry to football games for non-students. This applies at all five of Penn State’s major athletic venues, as well.

Fans will be able to access their tickets via the Ticketmaster app, and can also download them to their mobile wallet of choice. The new digital ticketing system will also introduce a simplified method of student-to-student ticket transfer.