NFTs are a lot more than JPG files on the blockchain. There is a substantial potential for this technology that has not been explored. In this article, I discuss one use case that I believe would be a great fit for NFTs
A couple of weeks ago, my dad surprised me with tickets for both of us to see Sir Paul McCartney on his most recent visit to Brazil.
I was, of course, very thrilled. After all, well, it's Paul McCartney, but also, and more importantly, because it would be just my old man and I. Music is one of the closest bonds we share, so it's always nice to see a concert with him!
The only problem is that he told me tickets were sold out on the official website, so he got them on a different website called Viagogo and since this was the first time I had heard about it, I decided to do some digging.
As it turns out, Viagoo is a marketplace for concert tickets where people can list tickets they previously purchased from the official vendors or someone else. Viagogo does not work directly with event promoters to sell first-hand tickets. It's commonly used by people who bought tickets to an event but cannot or don't want to attend any longer.
So far, so good but things started to get dodgy when I found a LOT of complaints about their service. There were two main problems that repeated themselves constantly across the complaints.
One of them was fake tickets. There's not a lot to elaborate on this one. Scammers just create very faithful copies of a real ticket and list them for sale. There is really no way for a regular customer to verify the authenticity of a ticket, especially when the forgery was well done, so people usually only find out they got scammed when they try - and fail - to access the event premises with their tickets.
The other case is a bit more nuanced. It has to do with the fact that people often list their tickets on more than one website like Viagogo (Stubhub seems to be another popular service of that kind) and when they sell in one of the markets, the lister doesn't remove the offer from other sites, potentially leading to multiple purchases.
Whether that is due to distraction or intentional malicious activity, the result is the same. Say that two people bought the exact same ticket from one of these listers who had multiple listing in different websites and that the ticket is indeed a real one. In this case, the first person who tries to access the event with their ticket won't have any trouble at all but the person holding a "copy" of that same ticket that tries to enter the event after the first one already did so will not be able to proceed because their ticket will be flagged as used already and, again, there is no way to verify that so the person will only find out when they try to validate their ticket and fail to do so.
I read that some people were able to get their money back but that's only part of the problem. Getting your money back won't help with the frustration of not being able to see a concert or any other event as initially planned. If you, like me, live in a country that is not visited by artists that often, that can be especially frustrating.
Enter NFTs
The way I see it, most of the problems stated above come from the fact that the "ticket," from the customer's perspective, is nothing but a piece of paper (or PDF file) that can be easily forged or copied multiple times and, as customers don't have access to the ticket issuer's system, it's impossible to verify the uniqueness or even the authenticity of the tickets.
That's where I believe NFTs could benefit the experience for buyers and even promoters.
Because NFTs are assets that live on a blockchain, in theory, anyone can verify all the transactions that one particular asset went through, which would make it possible to verify the authenticity of tickets. For example, to be considered valid, a ticket must have been minted by a specific address, which would be known to the public and then, just by looking at an asset's history, anyone would be able to determine if the ticket associated with it is authentic or a forged one.
Also, because NFTs are unique, there would be no way for multiple people to buy the same asset. Once it's transferred to a wallet, it will remain there until the owner does something with it.
I'm sure many changes would be required in terms of infrastructure, software development and, mainly, education, but I firmly believe this is a solid use case for NFTs that would make things much easier and more secure for event promoters and event-goers alike.
Final thoughts
NFTs were a hot topic a year ago but, with few exceptions, most projects failed to live up to the hype. I still believe there is a lot of potential in that technology that has not been explored yet.
The entertainment industry, and more specifically, the event tickets industry, can benefit immensely from the implementation of NFTs.
The transparency and uniqueness of that type of assets are just what the industry needs to make the lives of customers and promoters a lot easier.
Off-topic: the concert
Thankfully our tickets were valid and we were able to enter the event without any trouble. The show was great! Paul is already in his 80s but you can tell his spirit is still young.
He played a handful of different instruments and sang for over 2 and a half hours, and he even talked to the audience in Portuguese many times. It was a great night that I won't forget. Thanks, dad!
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