The Los Angeles Dodgers are playing hardball with their most loyal fans, and this time, the boys in blue are looking more like corporate bullies.
Errol Segal, the 81-year-old die-hard fan who has held season tickets for a staggering 50 years, found himself in the ultimate pickle when the team essentially told him his money was good, but his flip phone wasn’t.
Despite half a century of loyalty — long before the era of QR codes — the Dodgers flat-out refused to provide Segal with paper tickets for the 2026 season, effectively shutting him out of games.
Holding up a relic of a flip phone that definitely doesn’t support the MLB Ballpark app, Segal told local reporters that he doesn’t have an iPhone. In fact, he doesn’t know how to use a computer, either.
Holding up a relic of a flip phone that definitely doesn’t support the MLB Ballpark app, Segal told local reporters that he doesn’t have an iPhone. An iron-fisted “digital-only” policy seems to the the issue — which the Dodgers refused to waive even after Segal offered to pay extra for the privilege of a paper ticket.
“If I had the tickets one year, five years, 10 years, that’s another story,” Segal told a local outlet. “50 years I’ve had these tickets. They threw me under the bus.”
For the first time in decades, the devoted fan is considering skipping games entirely — even after being offered a refund for his seats.
“I said, ‘That’s not fair,'” Segal recalled, rejecting the team’s buyback offer.
The Dodgers, currently valued at an estimated $7.8 billion to $8 billion, apparently couldn’t accommodate a man who has supported them through thick and thin. The team argues that digital ticketing prevents scalping and fraud.
While digital ticketing has become the norm across sports, Segal’s story highlights the downside of an all-tech approach.
The longtime South LA business owner said he was still able to purchase a paper ticket at the stadium for a single game, but the team still won’t provide printed tickets for the full season.
As the story made the rounds on social media, some commentators argued the solution is simple: adapt.
“Will someone show this poor man how to store and use digital tickets? It’s infinitely easier than carrying paper tix,” Jason Boyce said on X.
The Dodgers have not publicly indicated whether they’ll make an exception for Segal, leaving the octogenarian fan in limbo.
