The mobile ticketing market will reach 1.9 billion users by 2023, driven by increased uptake of smart city transport initiatives and sporting event engagement, Juniper Research found.
In a study, Juniper Research predicted mobile ticketing users will increase from 1.1 billion in 2019, while the total number of digital ticket users across online, wearable and mobile will reach 2.2 billion at the end of the forecast period.
The research company found mobile ticketing is already a primary driver of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), which it said is set to become a “central pillar of smart city transport initiatives”.
Approximately 60 per cent of all mobile ticketing customers will be using metro and rail ticketing in four years, it added.
Mobile ticket purchasing is also becoming the norm in sports, with fans predicted to spend $23 billion via mobile in 2023, up from $14 billion in 2019.
Uptake will be driven by increased app use by teams for fan engagement, with many teams in 2018 switching to a mobile system which led to nearly 80 million mobile sports ticketing users.
“The rise of sports team apps means that ticketing vendors must provide effective APIs for ticketing in-app. Without these, established vendors will find themselves displaced by newer, sports-specific ticketing solutions,” commented Nick Maynard, author of the report.
With mobile ticketing uptake predicted to increase, Juniper Research added that chatbots as a delivery channel for ticketing vendors will also grow.
By 2023, users are expected to access chatbots more than 4 billion times for ticketing purposes.