An 82-year-old has been going to Los Angeles Dodgers games for 50 years. Same seats. Same routine. Same love for the team. Now she can't get in the door.
The reason? The Dodgers went digital-only for ticketing. No more physical tickets. No paper backup. If you can't navigate a smartphone app, you don't get to watch baseball.
This isn't about one elderly fan. It's about every company that rolled out "digital transformation" without asking who gets left behind. The technology works great. The question is whether it should be mandatory.
When Innovation Becomes Exclusion
Digital-only ticketing makes perfect sense from a business perspective. It's cheaper to administer. Harder to counterfeit. Easier to track. You can push notifications, upsell concessions, gather data on fan behavior. It's a product manager's dream.
But somewhere between the business case and the rollout, someone forgot to ask what happens to people who don't own smartphones. Or who have them but struggle with apps. Or who have vision impairments that make screen navigation difficult.
The tech community often celebrates "digital first" as progress. But when digital first becomes digital only, it's not innovation anymore. It's exclusionary design.
This Is Every Company's Blind Spot
I've built products. I know how these decisions get made. Someone in a conference room says "99% of our customers are fine with this." And the other 1% becomes acceptable collateral damage.
Except that 1% might be your most loyal customers. The ones who've been showing up for 50 years. The ones who remember when the team was terrible and came anyway.
Online commenters are furious about this story, and rightfully so. One tech community member noted that this is exactly the kind of accessibility failure that happens when engineering teams don't include diverse user testing. Another pointed out that the Dodgers have been in Los Angeles since 1958, and many of their original fans are now in their 70s and 80s.
What Inclusive Digital Transformation Actually Looks Like
