Making Ticketing for Events More Secure With Blockchain

With more and more event managers relying on digital ticketing means to satiate the needs and demands of their clients these days, the issue of ticket fraud seems to be on the rise. For example, data released by the United Kingdom’s national reporting center for fraud and cybercrime revealed that over the past year alone ticket fraud resulted in around 5,000 people falling prey to scams worth $4.7M.

Not only that, similar issues have also been witnessed around other parts of the globe as well. For example, a month or so ago one of the largest soccer events in the world — i.e. the Champions League — was plagued with a ticketing scandal that saw a whopping 30,000 to 40,000 people illegally trying to make their way into the Stade de France, the venue for the finals between Spain’s Real Madrid and English club Liverpool.

In all, the individuals trying to rush the stadium came knowingly/unknowingly with fake or unverifiable tickets, resulting in police intervention being required.The issue became so pronounced that France’s Interior minister Gérald Darmanin had to take matters into his own hand, claiming that the debacle was a direct result of “poor ticketing practices”, adding:

“70% of the tickets were fake coming into the Stade de France. Fifteen percent of fake tickets also were after the first filtering … more than 2,600 tickets were confirmed as non-validated tickets even though they’d gone through the first filtering.”

Here’s what blockchain can do to allay such situations

As highlighted earlier, one of the biggest problems when it comes to organizing extremely large scale events is that of fraud. To this point, just a few years ago it was estimated that 12% of all individuals who purchased any sort of concert ticket online had at one point or the other fallen prey to some scam. Infact, a study claims that roughly 11 million Americans fall victim to ticket fraud annually.

This is where the use of blockchain comes in. For example, the technology employs the concept of smart contracts, i.e. automated pieces of code that can help facilitate seamless transitions between buyers and sellers in a trustless, traceable manner. To elaborate, whenever the sale of a ticket is done via a blockchain-enabled platform, it is possible for ticket sellers to ascertain the identity of their buyers with the click of a button.

Not only that, since the sale of each ticket can be linked to a unique individual, promoters as well as ticket sales agents can make sure that resale markets are not only fair in their pricing structures but also extremely secure.

In this regard, ShareRing can be thought of as a user-focused blockchain platform that is designed for the issuance, storage, verification and sharing of digital information ranging from tickets, personal IDs and much more.

As part of ShareRing’s ‘Access Solutions’ suite, it is possible for users to utilize a decentralized ticketing system affording them access to various venues, buildings, events in streamlined, hassle free manner. Not only that, using the system’s native ShareRing ID, users can buy/sell tickets without ever having to share their personal data with a third party vendor.

Quite simply put, the platform completely mitigates the use of physical docs while greatly enhancing traditional operating procedures as well as promoting contactless digital transactions. Another option worth checking out is Guts, a blockchain-based platform seeking to promote the idea of “honest ticketing” so that secondary market prices where resale tickets are usually sold at ridiculously high markups can be regulated.

Not only that, the ecosystem also helps curb the widespread issue of ticketing fraud by allowing clients to maintain complete control of their digital info during the entirety of an event’s lifecycle.

Looking ahead

As the use of decentralized technologies continues to grow on a global level, it stands to reason that the need for blockchain-based ticketing systems will continue to increase. This is because the technology can completely bypass many of the issuance, resale, verification related hurdles that currently exist in relation to traditional ticketing means.

Infact, just last week, Michel Cadot, the French Olympic inter-ministerial representative, submitted a report suggesting to the IOC that the use of blockchain ticketing mechanisms be employed for the 2024 iteration of the Olympic games. Thus, it will be interesting to see how this technological niche continues to evolve from here on out.

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