Ticket sales are the lifeblood of nearly every event organizer. In 2020, the global events industry market was worth $886.99 billion, and it is expected to grow to $2,194.40 billion by 2028. It not only generates cash to cover the organization’s marketing campaign expenditures, but it is also where a performer’s cut comes from.
Yet, the rise of ticket scalping, in which people buy in bulk and then illegally resell them to the public at a much higher price, is spoiling the experience for everyone. Scalpers have effectively placed themselves in between artists and their fans, with many of the former not being able to go to concerts and other events due to the scarcity of tickets brough about by the bulk-buying of scalpers.
This is where SmartLedger, which has made a name for itself in the online ticketing market by developing TicketMINT, a solution that uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to combat scalping and boosts data integrity in the events industry, comes in.
Clamping Down on Aggressive Ticket Touting
TicketMint is a next-generation NFT smart ticketing platform that provides fans with an on-chain digital ticket while also allowing ticket issuers and event creators to take control of ticket prices and validate its authenticity.
“TicketMint will help by mitigating fraud, forgery and counterfeiting. This reduces the impact of ticket scalping and price gouging by allowing artists and event organizers to regain control of the secondary ticketing market,” Gregory Ward, TicketMint co-creator and SmartLedger chief development officer, explained.
The platform provides thorough sales management and pricing in secondary marketplaces, reducing, if not eliminating, the likelihood of scalping. Built on the BSV blockchain, TicketMint unlocks its potential to operate on a global scale, converting each ticket into a unique NFT that is time-stamped and designed to comply with specific rule sets.
The BSV Blockchain allows for cheap yet instant transactions on a public ledger. Because of its scalability, it is able to meet the demands of the market. This means that data blocks and throughput, which is measured in transactions per second (tps), can be constantly increased when the market needs it.
As the network scales, transaction fees are also considerably lowered, making it a practical solution for startups and global businesses. Currently, the BSV Blockchain is able to process 4GB blocks at a rate of 20,000 tps, with fees that amount to only $0.0001 per transaction. This is evidently more economical compared to ETH’s current average transaction fee of $2.77 and BTC’s $1.14.
Considering that scalpers drive up market prices through scarcity, it effectively builds a wall that prevents all but the wealthiest fans from attending the show. And if they do not sell those tickets, that would result in huge revenue loss for the event organizer.
An NFT ticketing system also allows for the resale of tickets. However, unlike scalping, it ensures that ticket resellers can only ask for the original price as actions within the system are governed by smart contracts.
Smart contracts allow for a set of rules and limitations to be placed on NFT tickets. They can restrict transfer of ownership by placing floor and ceiling prices. They can also limit the number of purchases made by each user. Only when the conditions are met can an NFT ticket be successfully sold or resold.
Making Room for the Resale Market
Event organizers have tried multiple solutions to fight off scalpers, including controlling the demographics of their attendees to some extent, limiting the number of tickets purchased per person, and making their tickets non-transferable to discourage resale transactions. But all these anti-scalping measures are nurturing a stagnant secondary ticket market.
Currently, scalpers earn a lot of money off of secondary ticket sales; however, working toward a better resale market returns the money to the people who made the events happen in the first place. This gives flexibility to fans to recoup their money by selling their tickets to someone else should there be changes in their plans months or years before the show.
TicketMint’s solution delivers a high degree of secondary market control using smart contracts in determining the parameters around ticket resale based on factors that are fair to all parties involved. It also establishes the ticket resale price ceilings, allowing fans who cannot attend an event to resell their ticket without charging an exorbitant cost to someone who failed to get tickets before they were sold out.
Similarly, smart contracts define the proper royalty percentage of any secondary resale proceeds and automatically redirects it to the royalty recipient. This creates a new revenue stream for event organizers and artists alike, eliminating the need for dynamic pricing models that exploit fan culture.
While neither of these things prevents ticket scalping, they both reduce the opportunity for scalpers to profit from secondary ticket sales—a vision that TicketMint adheres to in revolutionizing the attendee experience and event management industry.
“TicketMint has solved the global fraudulent event ticketing problem by utilizing blockchain to allow artists and event venues to issue and release uniquely numbered and timestamped digital tickets. These utility NFT’s offers gated access to physical or virtual events,” Bryan Daugherty, co-founder of SmartLedger and public policy director for Switzerland-based Bitcoin Association.
