According to Mohammed El Kandri, event organizers battling the ticket scalping problem have a greater chance of overcoming this challenge if they deploy a blockchain-based ticketing solution. A blockchain-based solution allows event organizers to issue digital tickets that are “tamper-proof and traceable.”
Growing Dissatisfaction With the Way Tickets Are Distributed
Blockchain is a technology with the potential to turn the tide against ticket-scalping syndicates, Mohammed El Kandri, the founder of the blockchain startup Ir4lab, has said. Since transparency and traceability are some of the key attributes of blockchain, using this tech to tackle the ticket scalping scourge is a “no-brainer,” El Kandri added.
El Kandri and others’ call on event organizers to adopt blockchain-based solutions is coming at a time when fan dissatisfaction with the way tickets to events like music concerts or football matches are distributed is on the rise. Some event goers accuse shadowy groups of deliberately starving the primary market where tickets are sold at official prices.
According to critics of the current ticketing system, this situation often results in some concertgoers paying up to ten times more than the official price to get a ticket to an event. To back these claims, a 2020 report by Technavio estimated the value of the global ticket secondary market to be just over $15 billion.
Blockchain Transparency and Traceability
Therefore, to counter this problem, some consumer advocacy groups have called for the passage of so-called anti-scalping laws. El Kandri, however, told Bitcoin.com News that a blockchain-based anti-scalping solution such as that of his startup, Doccerts, has a greater chance of succeeding. He explained:
By using the solution, we have been able to have visibility on the issuance process end to end, allowing everyone on the process to have a line of sight on what’s going on and this [in] real-time in a very transparent way. Blockchain also provides the much-needed security in a digital way without the complexity of paper-based security and verification measures available today.
To prove that a blockchain-based ticket system is what the events industry needs, El Kandri’s startup is set to “enable” its blockchain ticketing solution at an upcoming Web3 summit to be hosted by Saudi Arabia.
In addition to tackling the problem of ticket scalping, a blockchain-based solution allows event organizers to issue digital tickets that are “tamper-proof and traceable,” according to El Kandri. It also enables organizers to keep track of a ticket’s lifecycle from its creation to its redemption.
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