It was supposed to be a day full of fun and baseball. A day to celebrate he last Opening Day in Globe Life Park. But many Texas Rangers fans missed the first pitch, and a good bit of the game, because of ticket confusion.
Ticket confusion had lines wrapped around Globe Life Park. One Rangers fan said he has been waiting an hour and a half.
"I just went across the street and had a beer at Texas Live while I waited for the line to die down," he said.
Fans also took to social media, voicing their frustration with the wait time.
By the third inning, most people appeared to be inside the ballpark.
The Texas Rangers issued this statement to NBC 5.
We did make the change described below in increased digital ticketing. That may have caused some more questions when people went through the gates but the scanning process went pretty smoothly. Fans who held tickets for today were informed of this change in advance.
Over the last few years, tailgating on opening day has become more and more popular and as a result, you have a big surge of fans trying to enter the park in the last 30 minutes before the game, especially from the north. And with the addition of Texas Live! we saw more fans hanging out there until soon prior to first pitch south of the park. Our security and customer service personnel were moving fans through as fast as possible through all entrances.
Ultimately, all of the lines were gone by 3:45, 37 minutes after first pitch. And that is about the same timing as the last several years.
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The Rangers sent fans this earlier this week, leading up to Opening Day:
NOTE: New for 2019, the Texas Rangers will no longer accept print-at-home PDF tickets or parking. If your tickets and parking are not printed on Rangers ticket stock, you may use an electronic version of your tickets and parking on your mobile device. Apple and Android users may utilize the MLB Ballpark app. or any smart phone user may login to their My Rangers ticket account to access their electronic tickets and parking. This includes tickets forwarded to another party. For additional information, please visit texasrangers.com/digital
