Fandango rolls out cellphone movie ticket service

Do you want to see a movie? Are you tired of the hassle of paper tickets? Fandango has a service for you. The company is launching a mobile ticketing service allowing you to bypass ticket lines by showing the ticket-taker a barcode on your phone screen, reports TechCrunch. Ticket purchasers will get a text message with a link to a barcode page. Don't expect to go paperless anytime soon though. The service is only available in a few select theaters across the country. 

This is a great idea, but only if Fandango is in a sharing mood. If it is trying to become the Ticketmaster of mobile movie tickets, its plan will fail. Ticketmaster makes exclusive deals with venues and then charges a very high premium to users for the ability to buy tickets online. To run this mobile ticket service, theater owners will need to purchase barcode scanners (and probably a computer) for every ticket-taker. That's a big investment. MovieTickets.com is testing out a similar service. Imagine if some theaters only take tickets from Fandango and others from MovieTickets. Not a fun prospect. They need to work together and set up a standard mobile ticketing system that all websites can use. Until they do, you probably won't see a mobile ticketing system in your local theater.

Here are the theaters participating in Fandango's mobile ticket service.

• New York: City Cinemas 1, 2 & 3, Angelika Film Center, East 86th Street Cinemas, Village East Cinema, Beekman Theatre, The Paris Theatre.
• New Jersey: Manville 12 Plex.
• Houston: Angelika Film Center.
• Dallas/Plano: Angelika Dallas; Angelika Plano.
• San Diego: La Mesa Grossmont Center, Clairemont Town Square Stadium.
• Bakersfield: Valley Plaza 16.
• Sonoma County: Rohnert Park 16.
• Hawaii: Ward Stadium, Kahala Theater, Kapolei 16, Mililani Stadium.