Can blockchain technology bring fairness, transparency and customer confidence to the convoluted and scam-prone entertainment ticket industry?
A group of investors behind Crypto.Tickets, the same team that launched Tickets Cloud, an online platform for open distribution, believes it can. Tickets.Cloud plans to launch a four-week token sale on Oct. 5 to raise a maximum $23 million.
The global ticketing market has gone online with consumers moving en masse to mobile commerce. Tickets Cloud emerged in 2014, connecting event organizers with sellers to sell tickets both online and offline. In 2017, Tickets Cloud became the first platform to manage online ticket sales for AliExpress, an online retailer. At the moment, the monthly turnover of the company is $2 million with annual growth of over 77%.
But the ticketing industry faces problems with fraud, scalpers, fake tickets, incomplete sales of event tickets, problems with tickets bought on the secondary market and the lack of a uniform refund system.
Tickets are often bought en masse by bot networks and resold at a steep markup on the secondary market.
In addition, organizers do not know who the people are visiting their events. There is no opportunity to control ticket life cycle, or to understand who is the spectator in order to nurture more personalized communication with them.
The system is compromised by a lack of uniformity among the different players. And because the system relies on price quoting, allowing the largest players to get the best tickets while smaller ones are confined to turning a profit on fewer, less favorable seats.
Problems Plague Ticketing
Joseph Meli, a concert promoter, allegedly cheated more than 125 investors, including billionaires Michael Dell and Tudor Jones, in a scheme centered on tickets to the “Hamilton” Broadway show and popular concerts, according to Bloomberg News.
Craig Carton, the popular New York sports radio shock jock, was arrested in September for taking part in a multimillion-dollar scam involving tickets to Adele, Barbra Streisand and Justin Bieber.
The Italian Football Federation recently banned Andrea Agnelli, president of Juventus (an Italian football club) and three other Juventus executives, for selling more tickets than allowed.
To solve these issues, Crypto.Tickets has developed a blockchain-based, back-end solution and app for users, which serves as the client interface.
The platform sends each ticket to the individual buyer’s crypto wallet.
Blockchain technology can create uniform standards of communication among the parties and make the ticket booking process more transparent. Smart contracts can enable event organizers to set terms for crypto-tickets, such as pricing, exchange, refunds and resales. At the same time, customers can have the assurance their tickets aren’t fake and they are not used a second time by other people.
Crypto.Tickets’ blockchain-based ticket distribution platform offers automatic billing, fraud protection and clear rules. The platform is already available to the global ticketing industry.
The platform manages the interactions among all parties. Every event is governed by a smart contract, such as ticket issuing, payment processing, refunds and resale.
Crypto.Tickets’ main goal is to create an easy-to-use ecosystem for organizers, ticketing systems and resellers. The team is not looking to dramatically change the industry itself.
As a result of using this ecosystem, the spectator will gain the best event experience that starts with an easy way to buy a ticket and have a 100% guarantee there are no frauds, fakes and overpricing.
All customer interactions occur on an online wallet called Tickets Wallet that handles ticket storage, cash-to-token transactions and messaging among clients and organizers. The user chooses a ticket and buys it using tokens or local currency that is automatically converted.
The smart contract automatically sends the purchased ticket to the user’s account in Tickets Wallet. The user then scans a QR code that tells the system the ticket has been used, making it impossible to resell the ticket.
Numerous Projects Emerge
A number of projects have emerged in the entertainment industry targeting the key challenges of the ticketing market: profiteering, fake tickets and high barriers to entry for new entrants. Each project seeks to address the challenges in its own way, and has developed services to address the needs of event organizers, ticketing systems and customers.
Aventus is developing a blockchain solution to prevent counterfeiting and profiteering. The platform lets organizers create and manage tickets, control resale pricing and earn the associated fees, and manages costs. It features loyalty programs for ticket buyers. The company does not plan to offer analytics or an API for ticketing systems, so it cannot integrate into third-party processes.
KickCity is a blockchain-based social event platform developing a value-based social network where users obtain information on cryptocurrencies, offering rewards for those who provide information. This project focuses on creating communities around events and empowering organizers to launch, promote and profit from events. The main idea is centered around event management, not helping end users.
Crypto.Tickets: A Unique Solution
Crypto.Tickets provides a technology for existing and new players. The team believes that a blockchain ticketing platform should be open to all participants. The platform connects to any existing ticketing system to provide the full advantages of blockchain technology to customers.
Crypto.Tickets will also provide a vibrant secondary market for tickets through a decentralized exchange where attendees will resell their own tickets. For large events, holders will auction their tickets off to the person who offers the most money within a limited timeframe.
Blockchain technology is not just a competitive advantage, as many have claimed. Crypto.Tickets is building a system that will be able to work with any ticketing system.
Internal Token
Early buyers of Crypto.Tickets’ TKT token could realize 70 times return on their investment over a 5-year holding period, the team claims.
The TKT token is Crypto.Tickets’ internal currency and is used to established smart contracts and to support all transactions. Buyers will purchase tickets using TKT or any other supported fiat or cryptocurrency. Each time a purchase is requested for a ticket in a currency other than TKT, the system automatically orders TKT tokens via a transparent algorithm.
As users and transactions grow, so will the demand for TKT. At the same time, the number of available tokens will be limited by the ICO, boosting TKT’s value in relation to other currencies.
The goal is to reach 20% global market share in electronic ticket sales by 2023, with the market size estimate of $46.7 billion.
The team behind Crypto.Tickets brings a trove of experience in the ticketing industry and business in general. Their current platform, Tickets Cloud, serves more than 1,000 event organizers and 100 distributors.
The tokens can be purchased with bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ethereum. On the first two days of the ICO, the investors will receive a 20% bonus, a 10% bonus on the third and fourth days, and 5% bonus on the next three days.