What is NFT Ticketing and How Will it Disrupt the Ticketing Industry?

A Quick Rundown of NFTs

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital tokens that are stored on the blockchain. NFTs have had a huge impact on the art world, especially since it provides proof of ownership for a digital item, like a virtual painting by a prominent artist. As NFTs become more common, we’re starting to see an expansion of their use cases into areas like logistics, shipping, and now, ticketing. In fact, ticketing could be one of the bigger trends we see in NFTs this year.

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Introduction of NFTs to Ticketing

NFTs are set to disrupt the world of ticketing. They have the potential to fix a host of enduring problems that have plagued the industry for years. This is because ownership of NFTs can be verified using a decentralised, secure, and transparent ledger system, known as the blockchain.

Once NFTs are minted onto a blockchain they can be sold and transferred to customers digitally. Owners can store their NFTs using a secure digital wallet which they can access through their personal devices wherever they go. All they have to do is access it via their phone at the event. While all this may seem like it’s not a particularly big innovation, it actually has the potential to solve major issues in ticketing.

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The Biggest Problems Within the Ticketing Industry

Digitisation and QR technology has addressed many of the problems that accompany traditional paper tickets, like accidental damage, forgeries, or simply misplacing them. Unfortunately, it also introduced a whole new set of challenges, like fresh opportunities for abuse and exploitation, as well as increased security threats. Let’s take a closer look at how these issues have affected the ticketing industry. 

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Tickets on the Secondary Market

If you’ve ever tried to book a ticket for your favourite popstar online, then you’ve probably noticed how quickly tickets can sell out. In 2020, tickets for Beyonce’s ‘4’ sold out in an unbelievable 22 seconds! In today’s market, real fans don’t stand a chance against an army of bots that have the ability to buy tickets in bulk with staggering efficiency. As a result, legitimate buyers are regularly forced into purchasing scalped tickets on the secondary market — at hugely inflated prices — if they want to have any chance of attending a live performance by their favourite artists.

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Why the Lack of an Exchange Protocol Is a Problem

The lack of exchange protocol on the secondary market, is a big help to anyone who wants to do some shady dealings. When a ticket is resold on an underground market it no longer belongs to the actual buyer whose details the event organiser has on record. This means that organisers don’t have a clue who’s attending their event, creating a very real security threat. 

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Customer Trust

Another overwhelming hurdle that customers face when buying tickets online is legitimacy. Fans can never be sure that the ticket they’re buying is real. Sophisticated sites have fooled plenty of dedicated fans by posing as authorised ticketing agents when what they’re really selling are fake tickets. As a result, customers are left disappointed, disillusioned and with a preventably emptier bank account. 

5 Ways That NFTs Can Benefit The Ticketing Industry

The introduction of NFTs into the events world is an opportunity to address some of the most pressing issues currently facing the ticketing industry. If NFTs are implemented appropriately, they could drastically improve the ticketing experience for both attendees and organisers. Here are some of the biggest benefits that could accompany NFTs in ticketing.

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1. Preventing Scams and Fake Tickets

When you see validated transactions on the blockchain, you can be sure that it’s real. Even if someone tried to engineer a fake transaction, it would be virtually impossible to get it verified by the majority of the nodes across the network.

Since NFTs are stored on the blockchain you can reliably keep track of each transaction and you’ll always know when an NFT gets transferred to a different owner. Anyone involved in the transaction can easily check whether a ticket is authentic. Another great benefit is that when a ticket is not allowed to be resold, NFTs can be programmed to be non-transferable. That way, it’s impossible to physically transfer it to another buyer.

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2. Reliable and Perpetual Revenue

One of the downsides of tickets being resold on the secondary market is that artists don’t get to see any of that extra revenue, and neither do the organisers. With NFTs in ticketing, not only will you be able to prevent illegal resales at inflated prices, but you’ll also open up opportunities for perpetual revenue. NFTs can be programmed to have built-in rules for resales, new creative content and royalty compensations, as well as merchandise. 

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3. Reduced Costs

The amount of capital it takes to run traditional ticketing, along with the losses that accompany ticket scalpers, adds up pretty quickly. In comparison, the costs associated with minting and selling NFTs can be pretty insignificant. Not only could your production costs be lowered, but you’ll also be producing tickets that can’t be forged or copied, which means that organisers and customers can validate the authenticity of each ticket with confidence and ease.

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4. Quick Production

Once you have the infrastructure, a single NFT can be minted, completed, and ready for purchase in under 60 seconds. That’s pretty freaking fast.

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5. NFT Ticketing Costs

As an organiser, your NFT ticketing costs will vary depending on who you partner with. CENNZNet, a company based in New Zealand, promises to charge less than USD 0.1 for each NFT that you mint through them, and in general, you should expect a fee of under USD 5 cents per minting or transaction from any company. Depending on your service provider, you may be asked to pay the transaction fee required to send NFTs to your customers, but it’s also possible for customers to cover this cost. 

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Examples of NFT Ticketing

NFT ticketing is growing in popularity. Organisers who are interested already have a range of companies to choose from that can address their NFT ticketing services. Get Protocol, for instance, has been processing on-chain registered tickets since 2016, and in 2021 it processed over 500,000 NFT tickets.

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Some live events and concerts have been eager to embrace NFT ticketing, with YellowHeart actively rolling out NFT ticketing for their events since September 2021. 

The metaverse is also set to drive the demand for NFT ticketing through digital concerts. Animal Concerts are one of the leaders in the field and allow users to purchase tickets for digital events with their token ANML. Buyers are then given access to concerts in prominent virtual worlds like Decentraland and The Sandbox.

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How NFTs Can Revolutionise Ticketing 

NFTs have the potential to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the global ticketing industry.

When done right NFTs can give organisers the power to bring an end to ticketing bots, inflated prices and the underground resale market. With scammers out of the picture, those funds can go towards supporting artists and organisers, while also protecting the fans who may otherwise have bought invalid tickets.

Ticketing is one of the industries that can benefit most from NFT technology. It stands to solve some of the sector’s most pervasive and troubling issues and has the potential to connect fans and artists in a much more meaningful way.

While centralised ticketing is still the norm (for now) we anticipate that the trend of NFTs in ticketing will only continue, and hopefully bring about some much-needed changes in its wake.