Buccaneers Football, Delivered

I received  my season tickets recently and was pleasently suprised to see the 3-D effects on the cover page.  I couldn’t help but wonder why ticket prices are as high as they are.  Here’s the skinny …

From Buccaneers.com:

This year, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are bringing the action right to your doorstep.

Literally.

On Wednesday, Buccaneers season ticket holders began receiving their 2007 ticket packages, a development that is exciting enough in itself. The delivery of ducats means one sweet thing to every season ticket holder: Buccaneer football is right around the corner.

This summer, however, Tampa Bay fans will get another thrill when they open the packages that are currently winging their way out of One Buccaneer Place. Thanks to the most advanced tickets ever produced in professional sports, Buccaneer ticket holders will get a taste of the upcoming season the moment they open their envelopes.

The Buccaneers’ 2007 season tickets – general, club and suite – were produced using a breakthrough process called lenticular printing. The technique combines 3D stereoscopic imaging and Full Motion animation, which creates the illusion of video embedded in the page.

The results are stunning, as Buccaneer season ticket holders will soon find out. The delivery process has begun, with the first tickets arriving on Wednesday and the rest to follow over the course of this week and the next. Soon, Buc fans will be watching Joey Galloway catching a deep ball and Ronde Barber high-stepping into the end zone…right there on their tickets.

The lenticular printing process produces a thick and substantial ticket book with a surprising illusion of depth and motion. The images are actually printed on the back of the ticket material; it is the overlying texture that produces the movement.

Each of the three categories of tickets has its own distinct cover, all using the 3D and Full Motion effects. Barber and Galloway’s action, for instance, graces the Luxury Suite covers. General admission tickets are adorned with “clips” of Mike Alstott and Derrick Brooks. Stadium Club ticket holders will see Gaines Adams and Cadillac Williams jumping at them off the page.

All of the covers utilize Full Motion to depict the Pirate Ship in Buccaneers Cove firing smoke, with a red fire lighting in the eyes of the intimidating skull at the front of the boat and the Buccaneer logo rotating on the main sail. Along the bottom of each cover, the logos of Tampa Bay’s 10 home opponents initially appear fine before fracturing and exploding.

Inside the package, the Stadium Club and Luxury Suite tickets are loaded with motion, too. Individual players adorn the various game tickets, as usual, but this time they are in non-stop motion. On the Club tickets, they leap off the page in 3D animation while the opposing team logo detonates and the NFL logo beats like a heart.

On the Suite tickets, the Full Motion effect is once again employed, this time approximating a long video clip of the players in motion. Alstott, for instance, can be seen executing an entire end zone dive against the Atlanta Falcons. On Galloway’s ticket, the ball descends completely from out of frame and into his arms, and he then begins running downfield.

“The Glazers wanted to do something special with the tickets this year, something that’s never been done before,” said Jason Layton, the team’s director of ticketing and business administration. “There is a lot of excitement about the upcoming season, and we wanted our tickets to reflect that. We wanted to get our fans fired up for the season, so we pushed the envelope a little bit. These are going to be the best tickets our fans have ever held in their hands.”