The multiple-group fallback

Picture the Glastonbury moment. Thirty of you, five buying groups, and the event is Closed - personal details stay inside each group, because a Squad that size shouldn't be passing registration numbers around all year. Then the sale opens: your group gets through and buys its six. Another group is still stuck in the queue. You could buy for them - except their details are exactly what Closed mode hides from you.

That's the one moment the wall needs a door. Here's the door, and everything that keeps it narrow:

If your group gets its tickets, you might be able to help one other group get theirs on sale day - just their details, just for the day.

When it can happen at all

The fallback arms only when all of these hold:

• the event is effectively Closed (Open events don't need it - there's nothing hidden to reveal);
• the tickets are named (transferable events have the swap board instead);
• a sale date is set, and now is inside the sale-day window - from the sale start until 24 hours later, or until every group has reported, whichever comes first. A coordinator can extend the window when a sale runs long. (Closing the window stops new matches; a reveal already granted runs to its own expiry or revocation.)

What actually happens

The moment your group reports success, TicketSquad matches you with one waiting group - when an eligible one exists (a group with no active members, or that blocked yours, or that already has a live reveal, isn't eligible) - and your group gets access to that group's sale-day sheet: a card in the app for everyone entitled, including helpers, plus an email to the group's active members with verified addresses. The email carries only a link, never the details themselves, so turning access off actually turns the link off.

How the target is picked, in order: any group that has blocked yours is off the table entirely; then your group's help-first list, in the order you set it; otherwise the group that needs it most - fewest confirmed tickets, then the smallest, then the one that formed earliest. A group that reported failure still counts as waiting for matching; only a reported success takes a group out of the running. One live reveal per target group at a time. (One practical wrinkle: recording the helper's purchase as that group's success needs their failure report cleared first - a coordinator can revert it at any time.)

The controls members hold

Each group can set sale-day reveal preferences before the day:

• Help these groups first - a friendly ordering: who you'd rather help, if they're still waiting.
• Block groups from this group's data - a hard veto in the other direction: groups that must never see your group's details, even if they offer to help.

Your priority list says who you'd rather help; your block list says who must never see you. The app won't let one group be on both lists.

The leash

• Time-boxed - every grant carries its own expiry, set from the window when it's made; it's built for a day, not a season.
• Scope-pinned - the helping group sees that one group's sale-day sheet, and never anyone's account email.
• Revoked the instant it's moot - the target group reports its own success? The link stops working immediately. The helper withdraws their success report? Same. A coordinator can also turn any reveal off (or extend it) from the sale-day panel, which shows only group names - never the details themselves. The honest limit: revocation kills the link, but a sheet someone already saved or printed is paper - it can't be recalled.
• Audited - grants, snapshots, reveal emails (logged once delivery succeeds), extensions, and revocations are all recorded, and a live grant traces back to the reported success that caused it (withdrawing the report clears that link as part of the revoke).

What it looks like on the day

Your group's confirmation screen grows a card: You can help another group - with a button opening their sale-day sheet in a new tab (printable, saveable, exactly like your own board). Buy their tickets, report the success against their group, and the relay keeps moving. On the coordinator's side, the sale-day tab lists each live reveal as "helpers → waiting group" with extend and turn-off controls.

Nothing about this weakens the rest of Closed mode: outside this window, across every other surface, the wall holds.