> support requests from people who'd lost the email containing their tickets
"Losing email" is a problem completely distinct from the UX question. Since "losing email" is more-or-less impossible in year 2015, it isn't a reason to force people to make accounts. There are other ways to deal with this problem.
>Since "losing email" is more-or-less impossible in year 2015
Actually losing email is basically impossible but non-technical people still do it all the time. What they mean is that they can't find the email they are after. "I am not good at searching" is indistinguishable from "the email is gone".
Exactly, or their phone only syncs emails back a week/month and they bought the ticket months before the event. Loads of scenarios where this can happen when you run a consumer-facing ecommerce platform
"Losing email" is a problem completely distinct from the UX question. Since "losing email" is more-or-less impossible in year 2015, it isn't a reason to force people to make accounts. There are other ways to deal with this problem.