MLB Secure Ticket Access

Reducing Event-Day Friction Through Secure Mobile Ticket Access

Role: Lead Product Designer Duration: 4 Months Event Access Ticketmaster Integration
Fan's phone showing a live Yankees eTicket with an animated secure barcode
iPhone lock screen with a TicketNetwork game-day push notification for a Yankees game

TL;DR

Background
TicketNetwork partnered with MLB and Ticketmaster to launch a secure mobile ticket delivery experience powered by Secure Render. While purchasing tickets was straightforward, the post-purchase experience introduced new friction that affected one of the most important moments in the customer journey: getting into the stadium.
Problem
Fans had to navigate six disconnected touchpoints to retrieve their tickets. Authentication requirements, unclear ownership, and buried barcodes created confusion under game-day pressure, leading to support requests, failed ticket access, and lower customer confidence.
Approach
I led the redesign of the end-to-end post-purchase experience, transforming fragmented interactions into one connected journey. Working closely with Product, Engineering, Customer Support, and Marketing, I simplified secure authentication, redesigned account and ticket retrieval flows, and introduced contextual game-day reminders that helped fans access their tickets with confidence.
Outcome
Measurable lifts in game-day access, account engagement, and repeat purchases.
+18 → +42
NPS over 6 months
↑15%
Game-day access
6 → 1
Unified ticket journey
Overview

The hard part was never selling the ticket.
It was getting people through the gate.

TicketNetwork teamed up with MLB and Ticketmaster Secure Render to launch a brand new mobile ticket delivery experience. Buying the ticket was smooth. Everything after checkout is where it fell apart. People kept losing track of their tickets, hit confusing authentication walls, and scrambled to pull up their barcodes right as they reached the gate.

I led design strategy and execution end to end, across web, mobile, email, and account surfaces. The mission: take a stitched together post-purchase mess and turn it into one connected ecosystem that walks people confidently from "just bought it" to "I'm in."

Checkout was never the finish line. The real win was the moment someone walked through the gate.

Problem

The cracks weren't in the sale.
They were everywhere after it.

On customer-facing surfaces, no single screen was broken. The trouble was that small friction points piled up at every step after checkout, and event-day pressure turned each one into a crisis.

😕
Recurring support theme
"Where are my tickets? I paid, but I can't find them anywhere."
😤
Recurring support theme
"Why do I suddenly need an account just to see something I already bought?"
😬
Recurring support theme
"I'm at the gate right now and I can't pull up my barcode."
  • Tickets felt missing the moment people paid, hidden behind logins and Secure Render steps.
  • Many people had no idea an account was even part of the deal.
  • A minor annoyance at home became a full crisis in line at the stadium.
  • People pinballed between emails, account pages, and password resets to assemble one journey.
Discovery

It was never a retrieval problem.
It was a connected-ecosystem problem.

Before sketching a single screen, I mapped the whole journey from "add to cart" to "through the turnstile," then partnered with Marketing, Customer Service, Engineering, and the Ticketmaster integration crew to pinpoint where the friction actually lived and what it cost the business.

📧
Marketing partnership
The confirmation email was the first place people looked, but it told them almost nothing useful: where tickets lived, whether they needed an account, what to do on game day. A receipt cosplaying as onboarding.
🎧
Customer service partnership
Support fielded the same three questions on repeat, every day. Not edge cases, but the predictable symptom of a system that left people to figure out retrieval alone, under pressure.
🔍
The reframe that cracked it
Stop asking "how do we help people retrieve tickets?" Start asking "how do we build a seamless path from purchase to venue entry?" Redesign the whole ecosystem, not one screen.
Marketing partnership The post-purchase confirmation email we put under the microscope
Existing post-purchase confirmation email audited during discovery
Principles

Four principles,
one connected system.

Discovery handed me a clear set of marching orders. I turned them into four principles that steered every decision from that point on.

🎫

Access over account management

People want their tickets, not a settings menu. Retrieval becomes the main event.

🧠

Reduce decision making

Every extra decision adds friction. Cut the steps between needing a ticket and holding one.

👀

Confidence through visibility

People should always know where they are and what comes next. Uncertainty is the enemy.

📱

Design for event-day

Design for thumbs, time pressure, and chaotic crowds, not for perfect lab conditions.

Process

I explored with AI,
then pressure-tested with engineering.

To align everyone fast, I used Figma AI to speed up early exploration around the dashboard, retrieval flows, and account structure. Then I worked closely with engineering to account for edge cases, and built an interactive prototype in V0 covering login, authentication, retrieval, and event-day entry. I also connected directly with Ticketmaster to make sure the secure verification aligned with their Secure Render requirements, so product, engineering, and the partner team were all aligned before build.

Figma AIearly exploration
V0interactive prototype
Engineeringedge cases
Ticketmastersecure render alignment
Sign-offteam aligned

The prototype, from verification to the gate

One prototype covers the whole path: account verification, sign-in and recovery, then the live ticket in barcode, QR, or wallet form, plus every not-ready and error state. Tap through the flow, then switch ticket and error states from the panel.

Prototype states
Ticket
Error
9:40

New York Yankees vs. Miami Marlins

Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at 4:30 PM

I didn't use AI to crank out finished designs. I used it to validate directions fast and spend my time where it counted.

Solution

A connected ecosystem,
not a fresh coat of paint.

Instead of polishing pages one at a time, I designed four interconnected pieces that carry people from purchase to gate as one seamless journey.

Journey The same path, before and after the redesign
Purchase Checkout Email Unclear steps Account Find tickets? Locate Order buried Barcode Auth confusion Venue Stress + panic No clear CTA Account confusion Biggest drop-off Every transition = a new opportunity for confusion People bounced from email → account → password reset → ticket delivery, piecing it together under pressure Friction point Critical drop-off Entry point
Purchase Checkout complete Redesigned Confirmation email Event-first Account dashboard View Tickets CTA prominent Secure Barcode retrieval Gate entry Confident ✓ seamless Clear next steps + auth guide Upcoming events primary 1-tap ticket access Game-day push reminder Purchase → entry: one connected, confident journey Reduced support burden · Improved event-day confidence · Scalable secure ticket architecture Redesigned surface Proactive system Successful outcome

Event-first account redesign

The old account buried tickets as one of a dozen settings. I rebuilt the information architecture around upcoming events and ticket access, flipping the experience from "account management" to "event access." Persistent View Tickets CTAs create a one-tap path straight to retrieval.

Solution 1 Account order status, before and after the redesign
Order status, before
The original order status screen before the redesign
The original order status experience, before the redesign.
Order status, redesigned
Redesigned order status with progress tracker and View Tickets CTA
Tickets Ready status with a progress tracker and a prominent View Tickets CTA.

Game-day ticket reminders

People were hunting for tickets while walking to the venue, waiting in security, or circling for parking. So I designed proactive reminders that surface ticket access at the exact moment it is needed.

The whole idea: bring the tickets to the customer instead of making the customer go hunt for them.

Solution 2 iOS push notification, timed to game day
iOS lock-screen push notification showing tonight's game, venue, and time
Event, venue, and time at a glance. One tap goes straight to retrieval.

Triggered at the right moment

Reminders fire on game day, right when people need their tickets, not hours early when they'd forget all over again.

One-tap direct access

One tap drops people straight into ticket retrieval. No email digging, no account spelunking, no relying on memory.

Secure ticket retrieval

Working inside Ticketmaster Secure Render's requirements, I designed authentication that balances ironclad security with real usability. People verify successfully, finally understand why verification is needed, and reach their barcodes with confidence. You can step through the full flow at the bottom of the page.

Outcome

Fewer support calls, higher NPS,
more repeat buyers.

6 → 1
Fragmented touchpoints into one journey
Email, account, auth, retrieval, and reminders, designed as a single ecosystem.
+42
NPS, up from +18
Tracked in HubSpot across the six months after launch.
↑15%
Game-day access before arrival
Tickets in hand before the gate, not while standing at it.
↓18%
Reduction in ticket retrieval support contacts. Better visibility, cleaner navigation, and game-day reminders quieted the event-day panic calls.
↑12%
Increase in successful first-attempt ticket access. People found their tickets without bouncing across a half-dozen touchpoints.
↓22%
Reduction in password reset and account access issues. Clearer post-purchase guidance knocked out the most common authentication blockers.

The downstream effect was clear: people who grabbed their tickets without ever calling support were far more likely to come back.

HubSpot NPS, post-launch monitoring
NPS score
+42
vs. +18 pre-launch
Promoters
68%
up from 44%
Detractors
26%
down from 44%
Responses
1.2k
6-month window
NPS score trend Pre-launch baseline
NPS pre-launch +18, rising to +42 over six months post-launch.
Learned

What I'd carry
into every project.

01

The most important moment is often after the conversion

So much product thinking obsesses over getting people to buy. This project was a reminder that the experience after checkout, when people actually need the thing they paid for, matters just as much. Designing for the full lifecycle, not just the funnel, is what builds lasting trust.

02

Proactive design beats reactive design

The game-day notification proved a simple principle: instead of building better search, kill the need to search at all. Bringing the right information to people before they think to ask removes friction at the source instead of patching it downstream.

03

Cross-functional partnership is a design tool

The sharpest insights here came from Marketing and Customer Service, not a research lab. The patterns hiding in support tickets told a clearer story than any survey could. Treating other teams' data as design input makes every outcome better.

Try it

The full flow, live.

The interactive prototype itself. Tap the game-day notification to start, then move through verification, account recovery, and a live barcode.