The $2 billion Intuit Dome opened its doors in Inglewood on Thursday with a concert by a pop superstar, but guests didn’t have the smoothest start.
The brains behind the dome, which includes Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, have long touted its ticketing technology.
Ticket holders are required to download the Intuit Dome smartphone app. There, they can transfer their tickets from other buying services and upload photos of themselves, allowing the arena to admit them through face-scanning technology.
While that’s cutting-edge in theory, it didn’t quite work on Thursday night, as 11,000 fans were expected to show up.
For about 40 minutes, the scanners were offline, leaving long lines of fans waiting to enter the brand-new arena. There were also reports that the smartphone app struggled to allow fans to transfer their tickets from Ticketmaster.
As a result, Mars took the stage nearly two hours late. Then, early on in the show and completely unrelated to any tech issues, Mars noticed a fan in distress and stopped the show to allow them to receive medical attention.
After the rocky start, the “24K Magic” singer put on a fabulous start to the Intuit Dome by most accounts.
Thursday’s show was the first of two that Mars is performing to open up the Intuit Dome. He performs again on Friday night.