Trends in the Ticketing Industry

The ticketing industry is ripe for a shakeup. A few big players monopolise the market, touts and scalpers are a massive issue, and fans have had enough. 

Despite this, revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2025) of 8.02%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$91,142m by 2025 (Statista). But things are starting to change. The fact that the outlook for this sector is bright despite the issues it’s facing, not to mention the effects of the global pandemic, means it’s the perfect environment for a new player to come in and disrupt the industry.

NFT Ticketing

NFT ticketing is beginning to gain traction in the events industry. Seatgeek CEO Jack Groetzinger has already predicted that 100% of all tickets will be NFTs in 5-10 years. It’s not just the ticketing companies that are starting to see the benefits of NFT ticketing though. Avenged Sevenfold have rewarded loyal fans who held one of their “Deathbats”, a piece of NFT artwork, by airdropping them each one NFT ticket that can be redeemed at any of their headline shows.

Simply put, NFTs have the potential to be the future of event ticketing. It’s just a question of who can be the first to implement a functioning marketplace that users can seamlessly migrate to. 

Without making this into a post about how NFTs work, I will try to quickly explain how the events industry can utilise this emerging technology.

• An NFT is like a unique contract that only one person can ever own at a time. If a person holds an NFT in their crypto wallet, they are the undisputed owners of that NFT. 
• An NFT cannot be faked or forged. Again, explaining the inner workings of how NFTs and cryptocurrencies cannot be forged could be (and probably is) a standalone post. But, for simplicity, let’s agree that NFTs are impossible to forge. 
• Certain pieces of data can be attached to an NFT. You’ve probably seen plenty of NFT artwork. That’s effectively just a JPEG attached to an NFT. The NFT is the proof of ownership, just like property deeds prove you own your house. 
• In ticketing, an event ticket could be the piece of data attached to an NFT, proving ownership of said ticket. 
• NFTs can be governed by smart contracts that set what can and can’t be done with an NFT. For example, they could be made non-transferable, preventing people (scalpers) from selling them. Or a condition could be set to transfer a percentage of each resale back to the artist who initially issued the NFT ticket, opening up a brand new stream of revenue for artists, promoters and event organisers.  

It really is as simple as that. 

There are many well-documented benefits to issuing tickets in this way, from making counterfeiting impossible to eliminating ticketing scalping. Seatlab NFT has started to attract the attention of investors who are beginning to place their bets on who will be first to market with a viable product. The NEAR Foundation has recently awarded us their most lucrative grant to fund our growth and speed up the development process. We’re launching our innovative NFT ticketing marketplace on the NEAR Protocol later this year.

Just like Uber changed how we commute, and Airbnb changed the way we travel, the first company to successfully implement a usable NFT ticketing system will change how we buy tickets. 

SeatlabNFT is aiming to be that company.