Immerse yourself in the future of live events with NFT tickets.
Imagine - you have front row floor seats to see Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden. This is your DREAM; a chance of a lifetime to see one of the biggest artists in the world.
You approach the check in, reach into your pocket and … your ticket isn’t there! A wave of panic washes over you as you frantically search every corner of your being, only to find that you lost your ticket somehow on the way to the venue.
Now instead of seeing your dreams come to life you watch as your friends walk into the venue as you find your way outside and across the street to wait in the local McDonalds.
NFT tickets not only ensure that your ticket is safe, secure and easily accessible on any mobile device that is linked, but provides a programmable, dynamic experience for the owner that goes beyond the ticket stub.
Start at the beginning: what's an NFT?
NFTs, short for non-fungible tokens, act as a verifiable source of ownership on blockchain. These tokens are the digital “ownership rights” to things such as property, art, or ticket stubs that ensure the ticket cannot be forged or stolen.
This technology becomes integral in empowering the ticketing industry to modernize its protocols, ensuring lower ticket fraud and scams. It enables event creators to ensure attendees are the owners of the tickets upon check-in, lowering ticket fraud.
Fees per transaction are now cheaper than archaic ticketing systems that take, on average, 2.65% +$.30 - $.50 per transaction. This increases event creators margins that can then be reinvested into ongoing community engagement. Plus, event creators are now in full control of the entire ticketing lifecycle. From pre-sale to post-event secondary market resales, creators control all fees associated with the ticket, including royalty payments to those invested in the event itself.
Rewards and loyalty programs are programmable into each NFT themselves, which enables creators to provide exclusive perks and benefits to varying levels of ticket holders. This is all controlled by the smart contract associated with each NFT. These contracts ensure that once the holder fulfills certain criteria, benefit access levels are released, encouraging continued fan engagement.
What challenges does NFT ticketing solve?
Hidden Fees
We’ve all been there. You find the perfect ticket for your dream experience within budget, only to see the price increase by 150%+ with added service fees, venue fees, labor fees - there’s basically a fee for everything!
The problem, usually, isn’t on the creator or venue side, but the ticket distribution platform themselves as they look for ways to increase revenues at the fans expense. Notorious for being the “unwanted middleman” these platforms enable bots and other third parties to scalp large volumes of tickets. These scalpers then resell on the secondary market with huge markups, seen as high as 7,000%.
These hidden fees and uncontrollable mark ups push fans into a financial corner, making die-hard fans have to choose how far they are willing to go. Experiences are meant to be accessible for all fans, not just those wealthy enough to attend.
Increased Ticket Fraud
As we continue to see increased levels of experience goers post-pandemic, we also see increased levels of ticket fraud. From scalping to forgery, hundreds of millions of dollars a year are lost from event creators and fans alike. This issue will only continue to increase unless modernization occurs within the industry.
One of the major downfalls of traditional ticketing platforms, both paper and QR codes, is that they are easily forgeable. This creates a gap in the event security for fans and event goers alike as seen in May of this year during the France vs. Liverpool fútbol match.
With NFT tickets, and the smart contracts behind them, every time the ticket is loaned, rented or sold, the ownership details instantly change to match the verified owner. This ensures that security or event staff are only letting in fans that are the true owners of the tickets.
Zero Control Over the Secondary Market
With ticket scalpers and the bots behind them, it’s near impossible to stop scalpers from purchasing tickets from the initial drop. However, the bigger issue is when these scalpers put the tickets up for resell on the secondary market. Depending on the venue and creator associated with the experience, the secondary markups can be astronomical.
However, with NFTs, event creators now have full control over the entire lifecycle of the ticket in perpetuity. Written into the NFTs smart contract, which automatically activates once programmed criteria are met, each fee and markup is controlled by the ticket issuer. This means that, as the issuer, if you only want to allow a 10% markup per resell, that’s the highest the ticket can sell for.
In return for every transaction the ticket goes through, the issuer can program automatic royalty disbursements to be sent to certain parties - think artists, musicians, programmers, etc.; those that created the community or application itself.
How do NFTs enhance the fan experience?
The demand from fans is that they want more from the experiences they attend. This means ongoing engagement throughout the lifecycle of the ticket, not just sell and move on. Fans want to be dazzled, entertained, and awed at every twist and turn.
So what can this look like? Let’s say you have a conference you’re hosting. You have thousands of attendees and dozens of exhibitors, each vying for the attention of each attendee. To ensure maximum exposure and brand awareness for each exhibitor, you send the fans on a “scavenger hunt”, hitting each booth along the way.
At each booth, your exhibitors have exclusive access to merch and benefits based on the engagement the fan takes. This is reflected and recorded against each NFT, providing a great experience for the fan and enhancing the B2B opportunities within your conference.
This is just a simple example of how NFT tickets can enhance the fan experience. The opportunities are endless and really rely on your team’s imagination. Utility-based NFTs continue to take over the industry and provide event creators with the necessary tools to combat the challenges faced within the industry.
It’s important however to ensure mass adoption is on the rise. When humans turned from gold & silver to coins & bills to credit, each transition was feared until proven valuable. As we continue to evolve and grow as a race, it’s important to take steps to learn about emerging technologies and the benefits they bring to the table.
NFT tickets are nothing more than a digitized version of what you already know, just extra secure and way cooler.
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