Ticketing’s Shady Underworld Getting Gutted

There has emerged a rather large problem when it comes to any big event - ticketing. It sounds simple enough to get ticketing right, but there are so many scammers and routers out there who are profiting off doing nothing.

There exists a dark underworld of secondary sellers who make up as big a portion of 30 percent of sales. These secondary sellers or scalpers, touts and black market dealers are defrauding, and raising the price for the event going public.

These exorbitant price hikes from secondary sellers, as well as fake tickets and scammers, are placing a black mark on the ticketing ecosystem, one that has a solution. Like many different markets in today’s world, Blockchain technology is starting to disrupt them, and it is now GUTS Tickets who believe they can streamline the process.

The dark ticket market

GUTS Tickets is looking to take the entire process of buying and receiving tickets and put it straight on the Blockchain. The power of the Blockchain is well known, yet its application continues to grow.

GUTS believes it can crush the underworld ticketing process by firstly cutting out the need for any such middleman who can raise the price of an event ticket as high as demand allows. They also believe that the immutable ledger of the Blockchain allows for no chance of defrauding or fake tickets being issued. GUTS tickets is already known in the Netherlands and sold out multiple shows with their Blockchain based application for the most famous comedian in Holland.

In 2009, Europe Economics undertook a study to gain a better understanding of the structure and scale of the secondary ticketing market. Their findings, as described further in GUTS’ Whitepaper, are briefly described here:

• For popular music festivals, 20-30 percent of tickets are resold at a markup of 30 percent
• For high-end events (e.g. Kings of Leon), 20-40 percent of tickets are resold at a markup of 100-250
• For very high-end events (e.g. Madonna), 60-70 percent of tickets are resold, often with a markup exceeding 500 percent.

The GET-Protocol

Now, with this problem of secondary resellers sitting at the root of the problem, GUTS and their GET-Protocol, is primed to wipe this scourge from the ticketing ecosystem.

On the GET-Protocol, GUTS Tickets has allowed for Smart Contract tickets to be issued to wallet addresses.

These Smart Contracts allow for the creation and validation of events and tickets. The issuance and sale of tickets in primary and secondary ticket markets (which can be controlled by event organizers) and the distribution of ticket sale revenue and market/event fees between the stakeholders are both monitored and executed with these smart contracts.

With the live application of GUTS Tickets, end-users do not need any technical knowledge in order to use the platform. With this in mind, GUTS has facilitated several events with its application over the last year and has apparently already sold thousands of real-world tickets in the Netherlands.

They have made it even easier to see how this is all working with a visual showing of the sale of events tickets on the Blockchain. In this, users can see actual transaction occurring on the GUTS’ Blockchain.

Good for the artists and the buyers

Of course, the scourge of secondary sellers is a scourge to those who are desperate to buy tickets at any price, but it is also a problem for the artists.

GUTS has managed to attract the likes of superstar Martin Garrix’s manager and booker of Adele. These are people who know how important ticketing is and seem to be bracing a future disruptive technology that will affect more than just tickets but live music and events as well.