Guide
How to check in thousands of guests at a concert
Large doors fail in predictable ways: too few scanning points, a dead connection, and groups arriving with one phone. Plan for each before the night.
Updated
Plan the lanes
- Open enough scanning points for the arrival peak, not the average; most people arrive in the last half hour.
- Give each phone a station name, so you can see which door is busy and where a ticket was used.
- Separate lanes for walk-in sales, so buyers do not block people who already have tickets.
Assume the connection will drop
Venue Wi-Fi and mobile data both struggle when thousands of phones arrive at once. EventVidia’s scanner saves the list of valid tickets on each phone before doors and keeps checking tickets offline, then syncs check-ins when the connection returns. Print the door list as a last resort.
Speed up the scan
- Ask buyers to add their ticket to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet before they arrive, so it opens instantly.
- For a group on one order, scan once and admit the rest of the order with one tap.
- Handheld scanners that type into a field work alongside phones at the busiest lanes.
- Set the scanner window so tickets scan only from doors-open time.
Control who can scan
With a large team, turn on “Require sign-in to scan”. Only people you have added to the show’s team can scan, and every check-in records who made it.
Questions
How many scanning phones do I need?
Plan for your arrival peak and the time one scan takes at your door, then add spares. Any phone with a camera can scan, so adding a lane costs only a volunteer.
What if a ticket will not scan?
Type its ticket number into the scanner, or find the buyer on the printed door list.