Your iPhone could soon be the perfect partner for sports events, gigs and shows

If you use Apple Wallet to store your digital concert tickets, those tickets are about to get a whole lot more interesting and more useful too. Apple has made digital ticketing much more powerful, and the concert and sports giant Ticketmaster is the first big firm to demonstrate what it can do.

As with previous Apple Wallet innovations, this one is coming to US iPhones first. But, you can expect it to roll out more widely, especially from global firms such as Ticketmaster. The new features require iOS 18 or later, and it's launching this month before hitting other regions in 2025.

Ticketmaster calls it an "experience" rather than an e-ticket, and that's fair: there's a lot going on here.

What will Apple Wallet digital tickets offer?

In effect, Apple Wallet enables ticket sellers to deliver an e-ticket that's also a useful little app – so if you're travelling to a sporting event or concert, it'll tell you where to park or how to get there by train, what the weather's going to be like if it's an outdoor event, and how to find the appropriate bit of the venue.

In addition, the ticket might provide a themed playlist to help set the mood, and it can also provide fast access to location sharing features so that you can find your friends before, during or after the event.

Ticketmaster will be using the new ticket system in LA later this month for Los Angeles FC's home game, as shown in the image above. It's coming to Miami later in the year, and then to more events into 2025.

It's an interesting use of technology, but it's unclear how transferable these tickets will be if you decide you can't go and want to pass your ticket on to someone else. At the moment, e-tickets can only be transferred between two accounts inside the Ticketmaster app, and only if Ticketmaster has enabled ticket transfer.