Companies experiment with killing the barcode on event tickets and in stores

TORONTO — When fans score tickets for events at the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg in the future, they might notice the absence of a familiar feature: that ubiquitous zebra-styled inventory tracker bar that adorns almost every retail product imaginable.
The theatre’s operator, True North Sports and Entertainment, is testing a new Ticketmaster system that gives venues the option to omit barcodes that would usually be scanned to validate a ticket’s authenticity and grant ent