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You’d think technology would make event organizing easier, but in reality, the internet age has turned the ticketing industry, which is inseparable from most events, into a nightmare. Counterfeit tickets, scalpers, bots, predatory secondary markets, and exorbitant processing fees all make ticketing harder than it should be; these age-old problems that plague the ticketing industry left EventChain asking the question, “can technology be used to mitigate the problems that run rampant in the ticketing industry?” They argue that the answer to that question is yes and that the tech solution that can mitigate these problems lies within a blockchain database.
Problems With Ticketing
To understand why the ticketing industry needs change, it would probably be best if we start by examining the problems the ticket industry has:
Bots and Scalpers – Most athletes, artists, and event planners make an effort to offer affordable ticket options to ensure that fans from every socioeconomic background get to see them. There are long-term financial advantages to nurturing this fan/performer relationship. A fan who’s had an enjoyable, affordable event experience is more likely to attend future events and buy albums and merchandise. But the rise of online ticketing allows scalpers to make it nearly impossible for fans to find affordable tickets; for instance, bots can automatically purchase hundreds of tickets in a second. These bots and scalpers hike up ticket prices when they sell in the secondary market, forcing the actual fans and interested event attendees to pay an inflated price or skip the event in most cases.
Counterfeit Tickets – Ecommerce has been beneficial to many sectors of the economy, but it also made it easier for scammers to pass off fake items as genuine goods. And while someone who buys a fake designer handbag at least gets a functioning handbag, a phony ticket holder has no event they can get in to and no one they can turn to for justice.
About five million people buy fake tickets each year – fans of the Chicago Bears and the musician Pink are just a few of the recent victims of fraudulent ticketing schemes.
Exorbitant Fees – Thanks to service charges, processing charges, and many other fees, the ticket price you first see online is usually very different from the total amount you’ll have to hand over.
I mean, who wouldn’t be frustrated if your $250 ticket turned into $300.75, or your $75 ticket turned into $130.80, or a $20 ticket turned into $45 at checkout? Event behemoth Ticketmaster has been repeatedly scrutinized for their high fees and even had to settle a class action lawsuit in 2014 for misleading fee practices.
The Promise of Blockchain
The reason most people are aware of technologies like blockchain is due to its foundational role in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency networks. But blockchain’s distributed ledger technology is appropriate for any industry that needs secure record-keeping and trustworthy arrangements between parties, and EventChain saw that as an opportunity to optimize the ticketing industry.
Since data written to a blockchain doesn’t “live” at a particular location but, instead, is stored across a network of nodes, altering the ledger – history of transaction data – would require a majority of the participants (nodes) on the network to update themselves to the current state of the network that contains the alteration, rather than just one central server updating itself and the other network participants blindly accepting that update as valid. EventChain uses the blockchain’s immutable, timestamped ledger to store information about who bought which ticket, making it impossible for a ticket to be counterfeited because you will always be able to track the ticket’s legitimacy on the blockchain.
Furthermore, outside of rare network events called hard forks, it’s nearly impossible to erase data stored on a blockchain. For event organizers, this is an appealing feature to have in a ticket distribution database because it creates an auditable trail of a ticket’s path.
“Through the use of our blockchain network, event organizers can optimize and make the ticket distribution process more secure. We noticed the problems in the industry and created a secure ticketing platform so artists, fans, and event creators have tickets they can trust, without needing to understand blockchain technology,” said Ashton Addison, Founder of EventChain. “Event attendees can simply pay with their credit cards on EventChain, and the ticket will be secured on the blockchain.”
Considering that blockchain’s potential solutions to the problems in the event ticketing world would mean little if organizers and attendees had to be blockchain experts to use these next-generation tools, the fact that EventChain is able to make ticket purchasing a secure and seamless process via the blockchain is significant. Event organizers can simply set up events on EventChain’s platform, and attendees can buy their tickets online using credit cards just as they do with the ticketing platforms they have used in the past. As a matter of fact, unless a purchaser checks their transaction against the data on the blockchain, the user may not even know that they are using a blockchain! EventChain’s blockchain functionality operates behind-the-scenes, offering benefits without requiring users to learn new tech, a significant feature in terms of catalyzing mass adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.
Ticket Integrity
We all know somebody who has purchased a fake event ticket, had to pay an exuberant resell price, or just got flat-out scammed when buying event tickets in the past. That being said, if you are an event organizer, then you might want to look into using more secure and trusted ticket distribution methods like those offered by EventChain for your next event; a purchase logged on the blockchain guarantees that your ticket is legitimate, and this is huge if you are looking to repurchase in the secondary market. Blockchain-backed assurance of ticket legitimacy creates a more secure, reliable alternative to existing ticket distribution methods – plus, who wouldn’t want to reap the benefits of a more modern ticket distribution system as an event organizer or ticket purchaser?
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