An online sweepstakes offers tickets and other prizes connected with the Barclays PGA tournament in Farmingdale next week
The Long Island Rail Road, the tournament and CooCoo, a Long Island technology firm, are sponsoring the sweepstakes.
Entries must be received by Wednesday. Prizes include an Apple iPad, tickets to the final day of play at the tournament, and tickets to Spiderman on Broadway.
The LIRR and CooCoo will test a new LIRR ticketing service for transportation to and from the tournament. LIRR customers buying tickets through CooCoo for The Barclays are automatically entered into the sweepstakes. The sweepstakes form is available here.
The LIRR is predicting as many as 35,000 fans will head for Farmingdale and the Bethpage Black tournament. The top 125 PGA players will compete for $8 million in prize money.
The Long Island Rail Road will be providing extra, half-hourly train service to Farmingdale beginning Thursday, Aug. 23, the first day of competition, and running through the end of the tournament on Sunday, Aug. 26.
Peter Mele, executive director of The Barclays said: "We are so pleased with the partnership with MTA Long Island Rail Road. The additional service will ensure that fans have the best experience coming to and from our event. We expect record crowds will attend to watch the PGA TOUR's best and encourage everyone to take advantage of the LIRR as a convenient and quick way to get to Bethpage."
Under the LIRR / CooCoo mobile ticketing plan LIRR customers will receive their train tickets via email so purchasers can print out the bar-coded ticket or store the image on their smart phone for use on trains. Tickets will be validated with a handheld bar-code reader. Fans will then take PGA courtesy buses at Farmingdale for the ride to Bethpage State Park and the Black Course.
Ryan Thompson, co-founder of CooCoo, said: "This system is the first live mobile ticketing solution offered by a major transit agency in the United States. The Long Island Rail Road is at the forefront of the biggest change in transit technology in years. Consumers are demanding the convenience of purchasing tickets through mobile devices and on the web and forward-looking mass transit operators are meeting that demand in creative ways like the PGA event."
Round trip tickets to Farmingdale can be purchased directly or through the MTA website. CooCoo's iPhone or Android apps can be downloaded at http://www.CooCoo.com for real-time train and bus schedules.
LIRR tickets purchased online via CooCoo are good only for the day specified on the ticket. They cannot be used for travel on the LIRR at any other time or to reach any other destination other than the Farmingdale LIRR station.
