[theo_luddite]

The pay-on-the-gate ship I reckon has long sailed. Keeping a hoard of cash safe, whether overnight or over the weekend, and expecting a couple of members of staff to run up town with it the following Monday or other weekday morning is a high risk exercise that that the Insurance companies aren't going to tolerate any more. Have you tried finding a bank branch that is still open anyway?

Yes you could pay Securicor to come round and get it but it's cheaper and safer to let Ticketmaster (or similar) handle it and do everything by bank transfer. That said, there's surely a potential for the barcode software and readers at the turnstiles to be also able to read a bank/credit card or a phone pay system, given that you can transfer your Season Card to Google Pay for example. They can do it on the buses. The only issue then is how they assign you a seat when you turn up without one already assigned. Can't be beyond the wit of a few 10 year olds, surely?

That said, it doesn't cost Ticketmaster (or rather, their computers) any more to do a transaction for 1 ticket than 4, so them getting a "per ticket fee" rather than a "per order fee" is a rip-off. Likewise for posting out away tickets, the stamp and envelope cost the same, whether Ticketmaster or Town are sending them out. You are doing more work in this transaction than they are for any more than one ticket. You've then to assign them to other people in your "group".

To paraphrase someone who was once unhelpfully directed towards the self-checkouts at a supermarket - "No thanks, if I wanted a job here, I'd have applied for one."