We Need to Stop Viewing Tickets as Merely Event Entry

Everyone has heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” The saying implies that an image can convey a message or evoke emotion more effectively than a written or spoken description. I believe the same is true for a ticket. A ticket from an event is a nostalgic portal, it’s one memento, but more importantly, one thousand memories.

I have a ticket collection that dates back to 2000, when I was five years old and saw the infamous Toy Story: Disney on Ice at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, MA. I loved coming home, running to my jar stub collection, and watching it fill - and yes, I still have the jar with me at my apartment in South Boston for those wondering.

It wasn’t until college that I realized I not only wanted to grow my stub collection, but that I wanted to relive it. My collection had been building for 15 years and I never once went through it. As I pulled out countless Red Sox, Patriots, and concert tickets I began to feel overwhelmingly wistful. All I could remember from each event was that “it was fun” or “that the Red Sox killed them that night”, but I was unable to recall the small details that differentiated one event from the other. Since that day, before putting a ticket in my jar, I write down these important details: the final score, who I went with, a funny or crazy story that might have happened….anything to help me relive and not just remember.

But that was only a temporary solution.

My collection scattered when tickets went digital. Tickets were living in my email, Apple Wallet, and other third-party applications. I no longer had all my event keepsakes in one central spot. Digital tickets offer convenience for pre-event activities but fail to capture the post-event nostalgia that physical ticket stubs can evoke.

I vented constantly about this with my friends and when having this conversation with Ryan he shared a new yet similar perspective. Ryan was an exceptional pitcher (don’t tell him I said that) and admitted that during his time in the MLB minors he lived in the present, failing to fully grasp his achievements. To be successful in professional sports, the past is the past, and it’s all about the next game. The Bill Belichick “We’re on to Cincinnati” approach. Unfortunately, Ryan suddenly saw his career come to a halt due to an injury that left him not only questioning what to do next but how could he preserve those memories?

Ryan had numerous tickets from past games – but to him, they had little meaning, as the pictures from those seasons were his true souvenirs. That’s when it hit us – tickets and photos are two different ways we collect memories, but live in separate places. Our tickets get lost in a shuffle of emails and our photos get backlogged in photo albums…why not unite them and create one accessible hub for reliving events?

And just like that, Mementix was born.