Well, as it also notes, it works offline if you remember to open the ticket before you get there, and they don't (or at least didn't used to) give you sufficient warning. I found out that's how it works the hard way when it was new by having to walk a half mile back from the venue to get service to load the tickets.
There's also the chance the ticketmaster app won't work properly later even if you did do it. I've had other apps shit the bed for no apparent reason in offline mode before. I add them to my wallet now just in case.
Sure, I'm just reacting because TOTP is like the textbook example of a system designed to work without interactive access to a networked resource. The whole as TM designed it has crappy affordances, but you could fix that without breaking the design.
Why though? Lord knows I hate Ticketmaster as much as everyone else but “airline model” sounds fucking terrible. I hope I never see the day where I’m removing belts and shoes to get into a concert.
To be fair though I always get at least somewhat reasonable concert prices by doing presale. Sign up for the artist’s “presale club” and/or get the credit cards that have presale as a perk. Get in queue ahead of time. You won’t have to deal with the dynamic pricing/public sale shenanigans that we hear about. On Reddit I often see people complaining about paying at least 2x what I paid for similar tickets.
Recent experience for a large stadiums event suggests they have fixed the notifications. I got a lot of notifications encouraging me to a) charge my phone and b) download the ticket before arrival.
