My theory is it’s a janky workaround for a system that requires “an account” to buy tickets and so this was the solution they came up with internally to support

My theory is it’s a janky workaround for a system that requires “an account” to buy tickets and so this was the solution they came up with internally to support third-party integrations and possibly affiliate programs. The amount of weird-ass Rube Goldberg systems in the real world is staggering, I’ve worked on systems where this sort of bananas solution could end up being used.