The resale of tickets among other problems could be controlled, thanks to the capacity that blockchain has to store unaltered information
Ticket fraud is a current problem in important spaces like Broadway. In response, this giant of the theater industry is looking for new ways to make ticket buying more secure. The possible solution for that problem is blockchain technology.
One of the problems is the resale of tickets of secondary market with inflated prices. Last year, CNBC reported that about 12% of people buying concert tickets get scammed.
Due to its peculiarity of storing information that cannot be erased, and thanks to its ledger system, blockchain is useful in diverse fields from medicine to art and now in tickets sale for a Broadway show.
This happens since blockchain is able to store a lots of information where only participate authorized people. For this reason, the Shubert Organization gave an opportunity to Distributed Ledger Technology to do more than secure crypto-transactions.
Partnership
The organization, through its Telecharge and Shubert Ticketing division, has teamed up with a startup based in Boston called True Tickets. This company offers a mobile ticketing solution that runs on IBM’s blockchain platform.
That startup was one of two companies selected to take part in next summer, when pilots programs, whose objective is to improve and refine the ideas for selling tickets, would be tested.
Shubert Organization is Broadway’s largest theater operator which owns 17 theaters on Broadway itself and a half-dozen more in other areas.
“We are excited for this pilot with True Tickets to help us explore how to standardize processes across our partners and create a more consistent customer experience (…) We are always looking for solutions that help us work better with our many channel partners, while also providing a secure and convenient ticketing experience”, Kyle Wright, representative of Shubert Ticketing Division.
She added they see True Tickets as a “leader” in the space and that they are excited to put their technology to the test on Broadway.
In fact, the collaboration with True Tickets will allow integration of DLT into digital delivery ticketing services such as Telecharge.com, Broadway inbound, among others.
“At the end of the day, we aim to help our clients develop more meaningful relationships with their patrons (…) This pilot affords us the opportunity to do exactly that in a massive multichannel marketplace”, Matt Zarracina, Co-Founder and CEO of True Tickets said.
Blockchain Advantages
One of the benefits that blockchain technology could offer to this sector is preserve the official information. If a show gets canceled, the organizers will be able to easily issue tickets to the rescheduled show.
Maybe, through this technology, in the future it will be possible to use and individual’s face or fingerprint as a means of verification instead of only showing a ticket which could be resold.
The system is being tested until now. But the companies hope the pilot will help reduce the risk of fraud. Specifically, the buyers who have tickets sent to their phones through this new service will have the guarantee that those tickets are real since they were processed in the platform.
Broadway is not the only one experimenting with blockchain technology in the ticket-buying world. Blockparty, a startup based in New York, has been using blockchain technology in concert and event ticketing since last year. It seems that there is still much to prove and observe in this sector.
By María Rodríguez
