Admission Tickets Emoji

Two admission tickets, shown as a pair of perforated stubs with a string threaded through them. 🎟️ represents events, concerts, movies, theater, sports, and anything that requires a ticket to enter. It's the emoji of 'I got tickets,' that surge when you secure seats to something you care about. Approved in Unicode 7.0 (2014) at codepoint U+1F39FU+1F39F, four years after its cousin 🎫 (Unicode 6.0, 2010).

In the modern era, 🎟️ carries extra weight because getting tickets has become a cultural event in itself. The Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticketmaster debacle of November 2022 was the defining moment: 3.5 million fans pre-registered, 2.4 million tickets sold in a single day (an all-time single-day record), Ticketmaster's site crashed, and the general onsale was cancelled entirely. Resale tickets hit 70x face value, with $449 prices becoming $30,000+ on secondary markets. The fallout triggered a US Senate hearing in January 2023 and an FTC/DOJ antitrust case against Live Nation in 2024.

Ticketmaster-Live Nation controls over 70% of the market for large-event ticketing, and the secondary ticket market is worth an estimated $15 billion globally. 🎟️ is no longer just a celebration emoji. It's the emoji of access, fairness, and whether ordinary fans can afford to see their favorite artists.

On social media, 🎟️ is pure excitement energy. 'I GOT TICKETS 🎟️🎟️🎟️' is one of the most celebratory posts a fan can make. Concert announcements, movie premieres, festival lineups, and sports events all generate 🎟️ content. The emoji also appears in the darker side of ticket culture: complaints about Ticketmaster fees, scalper prices, and the anxiety of presale queues.

During major tours (Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, Beyoncé's Renaissance, Oasis reunion), 🎟️ becomes a status symbol. Having tickets to the most in-demand shows is social currency. The 'I got tickets' post generates congratulations, envy, and requests to be brought along in roughly equal measure.

On TikTok, 🎟️ anchors a specific content format: 'watch me try to get Eras Tour tickets,' with real-time queue reactions, screen recordings of Ticketmaster error pages, and 'I finally got them' celebration edits. Bots make up nearly 40% of online ticket traffic, and a cottage industry of 'I lost the queue' videos has grown around the frustration.

In professional contexts, 🎟️ appears in event-marketing emails, corporate outing invitations, and conference registration reminders. It reads more celebratory than 🎫, which is slightly more neutral or transactional.

🎟️ was approved in Unicode 7.0 in June 2014 at codepoint U+1F39FU+1F39F, four years after 🎫 (Unicode 6.0, 2010). The two stubs with a string through them mimic the way physical tickets used to be distributed: perforated, threaded together, and torn off at the entrance.

The design was added specifically to differentiate event/entertainment tickets from single travel tickets. The pair shape signals 'multi-entry' or 'admission pass,' more common for concerts, museums, and theme parks than for one-off bus tickets.

Physical admission tickets themselves have a long history. Perforated ticket stubs became the railroad and theater standard in the 1850s, with the tear-along-this-line design allowing clean validation. The modern admission ticket with a string threaded through (for handing out en masse at theme parks, fairs, and raffles) became common in early 20th-century American carnivals and county fairs. Willy Wonka's golden ticket (1964 novel, 1971 and 2005 films) turned the admission ticket into a metaphor for rare, life-changing opportunity, a connotation 🎟️ still carries.

1. 1850Perforated ticket stubs become standard for railroads and theaters worldwide
2. 1900Strung admission tickets emerge at American fairs and carnivals, the direct inspiration for the 🎟️ design
3. 1964Roald Dahl publishes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, cementing 'golden ticket' as a cultural metaphor
4. 2014Unicode 7.0 approves 🎟️ at U+1F39F ADMISSION TICKETS, four years after 🎫↗
5. 2022Taylor Swift Eras Tour registration triggers Ticketmaster collapse: 3.5M registrants, 2.4M tickets in one day↗
6. 2023US Senate Judiciary Committee holds 'That's the Ticket' hearing; Eras Tour tickets hit 70x face value on resale↗
7. 2024FTC and DOJ sue Live Nation/Ticketmaster over monopolistic practices in concert ticketing↗
8. 2025DOJ antitrust trial begins that could break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster's vertical monopoly↗

• •The Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticketmaster debacle triggered a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2023, where senators from both parties grilled Live Nation's CFO for three hours about the company's monopoly power.
• •Ticketmaster-Live Nation controls over 70% of the US large-event ticketing market. The DOJ and 30+ state AGs filed an antitrust case in 2024, and the trial began in 2025.
• •Eras Tour resale tickets hit up to 70 times face value. Face prices of $49–$449 became $3,000–$30,000+ on StubHub and SeatGeek. Average US concert prices rose from $91.86 in 2019 to $135.92 in 2024.
• •The FTC sued ticket reseller Key Investment Group for using bots to buy over 2,280 Eras Tour tickets and resell them for $1.2 million in profit, violating the federal BOTS Act.
• •Two hackers were arrested in 2025 for stealing and reselling over 900 Eras Tour tickets from inside Ticketmaster systems, earning $635,000 in illegal profits. They were charged with grand larceny, computer tampering, and money laundering.
• •Bots make up nearly 40% of all traffic to ticketing sites. One bot was documented buying 1,000+ tickets in a single minute. When you're 'number 4,372 in line,' almost 4 in 10 of those ahead of you aren't humans.
• •🎟️ was approved in Unicode 7.0 in June 2014, four years after the single-ticket 🎫 (Unicode 6.0, 2010). The two stubs with a string through them mimic early 20th-century American fair tickets.
• •The Willy Wonka golden ticket metaphor (from the 1964 Dahl novel) still shapes how 🎟️ reads: rare opportunity, life-changing access, the 'I've got one' energy.

• •Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticketmaster collapse (2022), The November 15, 2022 presale meltdown broke single-day records, the Ticketmaster site, and eventually parts of US antitrust law. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing followed in January 2023, and the FTC/DOJ sued Live Nation/Ticketmaster in 2024.
• •Willy Wonka golden ticket (1964 / 1971 / 2005 / 2023), Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory introduced the 'golden ticket' as a metaphor for rare opportunity. Every modern use of 🎟️ carries a trace of that 'I've got one' energy.
• •Live Aid 1985 stubs, Physical ticket stubs from Live Aid on July 13, 1985 became collectors' items. Original Wembley stubs trade for hundreds of dollars today.
• •Bruce Springsteen dynamic pricing backlash (2022), Springsteen's 'Platinum' dynamic pricing on his 2023 tour drew sustained fan backlash. Artists like Maggie Rogers publicly rejected dynamic pricing in response, making 🎟️ a symbol of the artist-fan-platform tension.

• •🎟️ is at U+1F39F U+FE0FU+1F39F U+FE0F in the Transport and Map Symbols block. The U+FE0F variation selector forces emoji presentation; without it, some platforms render the text-style dingbat.
• •Common shortcodes: :tickets::tickets: and :admission_tickets::admission_tickets: on Slack, Discord, and GitHub.
• •No skin tones or directional variants. The stub color varies by platform (Apple leans blue, Google leans yellow-orange).
• •Screen readers typically announce as 'admission tickets.' For event apps, pair with event name and date since the emoji alone gives no detail.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.