Feature_NFTs – Ticketing’s Interactive Future?
NFTs
TICKETING’S INTERACTIVE FUTURE? Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, have been grabbing the headlines over the past few months, and with artists and other sectors of the music industry capitalising on the opportunities, Gordon Masson takes a closer look at the ticketing possibilities.
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rt auctions, album launches, video clips, gaming characters, and even historic Twitter tweets have helped to put the concept of NFTs on the map, with hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands already this year for all manner of collectible digital assets. The rush to become a part of this lucrative 21st century phenomena has seen a raft of startup enterprises amassing impressive sums in funding from eager investors, while the publicity that art auctions in particular have enjoyed, has helped NFTs become one of the most searched for terms on Google. As a result, when it comes to leveraging the power of NFTs for ticketing, there is an ever-increasing pool of hopefuls trying to entice artists, venues, event organisers, and established ticket operators to put their faith in the blockchain-based technology. The multinational ticketing giants are cautious. Ticketmaster’s EVP of enterprise and revenue, Brendan Lynch, sums up their view on the use of blockchain-based operations. “Ticketmaster jumped into blockchain early, acquiring Upgraded back in 2018 and furthering our focus in the space through other investments and de-
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velopment,” he says. “Blockchain ticketing is still in experimental stages and not yet scalable for broad ticketing delivery but is useful for specific low volume situations. Right now, digital ticketing offers the same level of tokenisation, terms, and security with way more scale – and since less than 10% of tickets get resold, a traditional blockchain still isn’t worthwhile for large on-sales. But our cryptographers and engineers will continue to explore blockchain ticketing delivery to see where it can differentiate and add value in the future.” However, the excitement among those who are helping to develop the NFT ticketing market is palpable and as the myriad applications and transparency that the blockchain can offer become more apparent, investment is flooding in to drive that development – including from the likes of Ticketmaster. One company that has been working with blockchain for the last five years is Netherlands-based GET Protocol, which is also home to in-house ticketing operation GUTS Tickets. “It’s a little bit derogatory to say, but GUTS is sort of our ticket store asset to show what GET Protocol can do,” explains Olivier Biggs, the company’s head of marketing. “All of our tickets are NFTs
