Forming an Opportunity Belief: A Twist on Opportunity Identification

Opportunity Belief: The Gator Student Ticket Office doesn’t have a system where they can track your tickets your football tickets in case they are lost or stolen. You must buy a new ticket or remember exactly where you were sitting for them to do reprint your ticket.

Belief Description: The unmet need that I have found for this opportunity is the need for updated software and procedures for the Student Ticket Office when they are handing out tickets for football during the week of home games. Students that pay for season tickets, buy single-game tickets, or guest tickets for friends and family that don’t attend UF are the main proponents of this need since they are the people that deal with the Student Ticket Office. The need for new software that can track tickets has been in place for a while now. It was only that when I lost one of my tickets that I recognized the issue. The only thing students can do about meeting this need is to purchase another ticket for the game, either from the office or from another student. The other remedy is to hope to find their lost or stolen ticket somewhere on campus.

Prototypical Customers: Students that purchase season or single-game tickets and guests are the customers that have this unmet need.

Chris (a student who buys single-game tickets)

Hannah (student with season tickets)

Chad (a student that has bought guest tickets in the past)

Interviews: Chris, Hannah, and Chad

For the first person, I spoke with Chris, a student that regularly purchases single-game tickets from either the Student Ticket Office or from other students selling their tickets online. He mentioned that he has lost tickets in the past while walking around on campus and has spoken to the ticket office only to find out that they can’t reprint lost tickets. He explained that the unmet need doesn’t happen very often, but it is a headache when it does happen because there is nothing that he can do about getting a new ticket besides buying one. He mentioned that he has worked at a ticketing office in the past and that they should have a system where they scan the tickets before handing to them, tying them to your UF ID. Chris spoke about how dissatisfied he was with the solutions the Student Ticket Office gave him because he felt that they should have a system like this in place for the number of students they serve yearly during football games.

I interviewed Hannah next who have bought season tickets for the past two seasons of football games. She mentioned she only has lost one of her tickets, but her friends have lost their tickets in the past because they pick them up in a group. She and her friends have run into the issue a few times and have tried to figure out what the Student Ticket Office can do. She has found it aggravating that the ticket office can’t do anything about it despite the number of people they serve every home game during the season. However, she did mention that the ticket office told them that they pre-print their tickets before handing them out. She said that their system only tracks that you have tickets for the game, but the seats aren’t assigned until you have the tickets in-hand. Hannah said she understands how the system works, but she wished they scanned them to your account or ID before handing them to you.

The final person I spoke to was Chad, a student that doesn’t regularly buy tickets to the game but has bought student and guest tickets for a few games last year. He hasn’t personally lost one of his tickets, but he had a friend lose their ticket for a game and went through the process a lot of other people have gone through with the ticket office. He mentioned that he feels it isn’t right for the university to charge for the tickets, student or guest, to not have a system in place to track them in case they are lost or stolen. He said that it is probably a common issue among students with football tickets with how much they deal with daily. She thinks that the solution for the issue is to buy a new ticket is ridiculous because the new ticket will be put in a new seat, probably not close to the original seats.

Reflection:

After interviewing the three students, the opportunity is still there for an entrepreneur that might be interested in offering software that could resolve the issue at hand. I found that the students that I interviewed really wish there was a better solution than just buying another ticket which they didn’t feel like it was a solution. They felt that it was just more of a bypass to the issue than solving the solution for students that lose their tickets.

Summary:

I believe the opportunity is still there for an entrepreneur to offer a new software for the ticket office to integrate so they can keep track of student tickets and be able to reprint if they are lost. I believe the opportunity is a lot more accurate after interviewing the students about the current system and how it affects them. It allows for the opportunity to properly solve the issue at hand that could benefit both the students and the ticket office. I think the trade-off that could be presented with integrating new software is that ticket handling time could take longer now that they would be scanning tickets onto your account before handing them out, slowing down the queue for picking up tickets.