A Season or membership is a special type of event that allows the buyer (season pass holder) to participate to all the events included in the season or membership.
When a buyer purchases a ticket (pass) to the season, they can later apply that pass to their shopping cart to reserve tickets to the individual events that the pass applies to.
An admin can edit the season at any time to add more events to the season as events get scheduled and become available on the site.
Events in a season can be single events or recurring ones. For recurring events, each pass is only applicable to one ticket across all dates
Passes can give full or partial discount to the events they apply to. When you add an event to the pass, you can specify how much discount is applicable. For example, you can have events that are free with the pass and events that are 50% off.
A season has a 'start date', which is the first date that the buyers can redeem their pass for tickets and it has a 'duration' which determines the last date that the season pass is redeemable.
For regular seasons, like annual seasons, set the duration to 1 year or so.
Season passes or memberships can optionally be set to expire at certain period after the purchase which makes them suitable for the membership model. For example, you can sell memberships that expire 1 year after purchase. To use this model, set the season to expire at certain period after purchase and set the duration of the season to a long period like several years. So the membership is a long running season with passes set to expire at certain period after purchase.
Pass expiration date gets printed on the ticket and can be adjusted from the sales invoice by the administrator.
Season passes / memberships can be set to auto-renew. The renew may be set to happen to the same season pass / membership, or it may renew to another season (next season). Renewing to the same membership is useful for cases like long-running classes with monthly membership or membership to a gym or museum. Renewing to the next event can be used for theatrical or sports season passes that the pass renews to the next season or next year pass.
If the buyer pays with a payment processor capable of storing the buyer's credit card for recurring purchases, currently only Stripe, the buyer's card will be stored in Stripe and the renewal tickets will be charged to the same card. However, if you are using other payment processors, or the card on file gets declined or is expired, reservation will happen and the amount is invoiced to the buyer. As soon as the buyer makes a payment for the invoice through the link provided in the invoice, the tickets are released to them.
The renewal happens at the end of the season for seasons with set end date or it will happen on the expiration date of the membership. It is important that at the time of renewal, the renewal event must be active, on-sales and tickets should be available.
To create a season use Control Panel > Events & Venues > Seasons and create a new season.
On the events tab, add all the events included in the season or if the events are not ready or scheduled yet, you can add them at a later time.
Save the season.
When the buyer purchases the season, they receive a ticket with a code on it. They can redeem the code later-on to purchase free or discounted tickets to any event that is included in the season.
The buyer can apply (redeem) their code from the shopping cart. The option to apply a pass only appears in the shopping cart if you have at least one active season within the seasons date range.
Season passes are explained in details at the following blog and video:
Everything About Season Passes and Memberships for Theaters and Sports: Setting up, Selling, Redeeming - On Ticketor
