Web Firms Eyeing Market for Print-at-Home Tickets.

As e-commerce, e-mail and e-zines keep pushing consumers toward a paperless world, several L.A. companies are betting their future on the humble printer.

Pasadena-based TicketMaster OnLine-CitySearch Inc. and Santa Monica-based Stamps.com subsidiary EncrypTix Inc. envision a time when people will be able to download everything from tickets for sporting events to postage for a letter - and then, print it at home.

"It's not like this wild stretch of the imagination anymore," said Melissa Shore, an analyst at Jupiter Communications. "In a few years it will become the norm."

TicketMaster will launch an extensive campaign to notify people about their print-at-home capabilities during the second quarter. A dozen venues across the country, including the Staples Center, will be able to read the tickets printed from home, which include a bar code for verification of authenticity.

Although they declined to give specifics, company officials with EncrypTix said they are in negotiations to license Stamps.com's print-at-home technology to other ticket companies in the coming months.

How it works

The interface to download tickets is relatively simple. When a ticket is purchased, the customer will be given the choice to print the ticket at home or to get it through regular or express mail - or to simply pick it up at the venue's will call window.

Both TicketMaster and EncrypTix have tested the printing option on a large number of printers.

The printed ticket can include a variety of information alongside the name and time of the event. Tom Stockham, executive vice president at TicketMaster OnLine-CitySearch, said the ticket could include retail coupons.

When it comes to counterfeiters, the print-at-home tickets may be even more secure than the variety commonly distributed now.

Each ticket will have a unique barcode that allows only the first person who presents the ticket at the door admittance. Any other tickets - like a counterfeit or a photocopy -- that have the same barcode will be rejected after that initial person gets through.

"If some guy gets cute and decides to make 50 copies of a ticket and gives it out to all his friends, it won't work," said Jim Rowan, president and CEO of EncrypTix. "But just like a ticket now, you do have the obligation to protect it. Don't leave it laying around on your desk."

The printout, in most cases, will be instantaneous.

"There are certain events that if it sells out very, very quickly, we will do a fraud check to try to prevent scalpers and brokers and things like that," Stockham said. "There may be a delay while we're doing that, but then we'll wind up e-mailing you the ticket."

Some analysts warn that providing a single print-at-home service - like postage - may not be enough to sustain a company in the long run. "At this point, the market (for postage) is very, very small," said Howard Dyckovsky, an analyst with PC Data. "The stamp people are selling a couple hundred units a week nationwide."

Strong long-term market

Indeed, end-of-year results for Stamps.com were well below analysts' expectations, attributed in part to the company's extensive marketing costs. Stamps.com is engaged in a tough battle with San Mateo-based E-Stamp.com, which offers similar postage printing services.

For the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, Stamps.com reported a net loss of $33.4 million (91 cents a share), compared with a loss of $2.5 million (44 cents) for the same period a year ago. Revenues for the quarter were $358,000.

The losses haven't slowed the stock price. Stamps.com closed at $13.68 on its first day of trading on June 25, 1999 - and was up to $31.06 at close on Feb. 9.

Because the market for tickets may fare better in the long run than postage, Stamps.com is pushing EncrypTix to expand into tickets for events and travel.

Roughly $300 million worth of theater, concert and sporting-event tickets were sold online in 1999 - about 10 percent of all ticket sales, according to a report by Forrester Research. By 2004, the company predicts that online ticket sales will grow to $4 billion.

That's not even counting tickets for movies, tours, theme parks and cruises, which EncrypTix believes represent another $3.6 billion market waiting to be put online.

"(At-home printing is) definitely the way of the future," Dyckovsky said. "When TicketMaster first started, it took a while for people to get used to the fact that they could get on the phone and get tickets instead of physically going somewhere and buying them. It will be the same with printing at home. People will get used to it."

With tickets going techie, what will happen to L.A.'s thriving ticket scalper subculture?

Stockham said TicketMaster Online ran several unscientific experiments to see if people would buy an e-ticket from a scalper that was presented to them on an 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper.

"What we've found so far in research we've done is that if somebody tries to sell them a ticket on a normal piece of paper, they're just like, 'Yeah, right,"' he said.