Why Ticketing Industry Needs Blockchain

Time and again we keep experiencing one problem or the other with the current ticketing systems. At times, several people are sold the same tickets, other times bots buy all the tickets and nothing is left for actual attendees.

Not to forget the usual tickets touts and their markups. It’s getting more and more difficult for an everyday Joe to buy tickets online.

The worst one is when you do manage to get the tickets, but for some reason, the event gets canceled, you never get your refund or have to write multiple emails in order to get your money back.

Bots outbreak

To top it off, despite countless efforts to clean up ticket market, powerful software is available online to bypass the security systems of major ticketing companies. According to Ticketmaster, about 60 percent of the hottest tickets are bought by bots.

A single broker, using a bot, purchased 1,012 tickets to a 2014 U2 concert at Madison Square Garden in under a minute, despite the venue limiting sales to four tickets per customer. By the end of the day, that same broker purchased 15,000 tickets.

Even tickets for free events, like Pope Francis’s visit to New York in 2015, were gobbled up by bots and sold for thousands of dollars on secondary sites.

Global sales of sports, concerts and theatre tickets online in 2016 alone were close to a whopping $30 bln. This market is expected to increase by 13 percent by 2021. But, as unfortunate as it is, the process of buying tickets to such events is everything but smooth.

Crypto.tickets is here to revolutionize the way event ticketing ecosystem works by using Blockchain.

How does it solve the problems?

Even though online ticketing systems have been around for years, a number of unsolved problems remain.

Fakes and frauds

Issues such as - tickets duplication, tickets to fake events, counterfeit tickets - are not unheard of in this industry. There is no way to validate the authenticity of a ticket, which allows rogues to sell same tickets to multiple customers.

When this happens, only the first customer to arrive at the venue gets in; others are left unable to attend the event. It’s not just the consumers who suffer, but the organizer as well, who could have sold the tickets to people that ended up with fake tickets.

Crypto.tickets makes sure the ticket you’re purchasing is unique and valid and safe from any fraud with the help of Blockchain - even if you buy them from the secondary market. They have a transparent history on issue, resale, and redemption on the entrance for all market players.

Crypto.tickets allows users to purchase tickets through both TKT tokens and fiat money. However all the transactions within the platform are made in tokens. This is how all the tickets are protected from any fraud and scam. The architecture of the platform is such that it guarantees one ticket goes to one person (one wallet) only.

Scalpers

As soon as the tickets are issued for sale, ticket touts and ‘bots’ buy all the tickets available in bulk from non-secure sellers in the first minutes and resell them exorbitant prices.

This is one of the major problems in today’s ticketing market - many customers can’t afford overpriced tickets in secondary market, and as a result, organizers lose profits and valuable customers.

Furthermore, Crypto.tickets allows organizers to set clear rules on dealing with the secondary market through the use of smart contracts. Such rules include whether or not tickets can go to secondary markets at all, what are the secondary sales commissions, and so on.

It’s important to note that event organizers receive commission for the upsell, so smart contract is needed to make sure one ticket goes to one wallet.

This process can be compared to how Olympic games ticketing system works. In order to buy any Olympic game ticket, you need to submit in your ID. In Crypto.tickets’ case, role of ID is played by personal wallet associated to the user. So in a nutshell, a ticket is equal to a token. The ticket can’t be cut into pieces or divided for anyone to fake it.

No transparency and mess for a user

To buy an event ticket, a spectator must check numerous websites, study ratings and availability, in order to get the best prices. There is no central database where the all the information can be checked in a simple and transparent manner. Tickets are still easy to forge, inconvenient to store and resell.

Crypto.tickets is a backend platform, while Tickets.wallet - developed by the Crypto.tickets team - is the app or user interface that allows managing purchased tickets easily; from storing to transferring and reselling. It can also be used for selling tickets to secondary markets with sales rules decided by the seller - either fixed price or auction.

The app helps buyers see all the ticket details at one place, as well as get access to unique content from various artists. When a ticket is purchased, a smart contract is sent by Crypto.tickets to a unique wallet, which can be accessed via ticket.wallet app itself.

Ticket.wallet is also responsible for storing and sending TKT tokens, storage of Crypto.tickets, conversion of fiat currency into tokens, and vice-versa with the use of exchange gateway.

Crypto.tickets token sale

Crypto.tickets is looking to raise $23 mln by issuing its own cryptocurrency (TKT) through Initial Coin Offering, corresponding to a widely accepted standard, ERC20. No coins are issued after the ICO.

All operations within the Crypto.tickets ecosystem are executed with TKT token, from purchases to returning to voting. This ensures a high-security level and prevents any unauthorized human intervention in the processes.

TKT distribution

The tokens can be purchased with Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

If $23 mln mark is reached, 914.869.281 TKT tokens will be issued. On the first two days of the ICO, the investors will get a 20 percent bonus to their tokens, 10 percent bonus on the third and fourth days, and five percent bonus on the next three days. On the rest of the days, the tokens will be sold with no bonuses.

Here’s how TKT distribution will be:

ICO investors: 68.86 percent, Private offer investors: 7.64 percent, Tickets Chain Growth Fund: three percent, Bounty: two percent, Tickets Cloud Team: 15 percent and Advisors: 3.5 percent.

To learn more about the team behind Crypto.tickets and their roadmap, please read the white paper.

Written by Anupam Varshney