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Supersigil

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Digital shadow of composer/producer/guitarist Alex Roth, releasing my debut album Spectres in dark corners of the internet.

Mar 28, 2024

6 cases for selling tickets as NFTs
I originally shared the following thoughts around the time of the Taylor Swift / Ticketmaster debacle in 2022. Over the last few days, the conversation seems to have resurfaced, with @onopen dropping their Onchain Tickets Manifesto (pictured, with nearly 15k mints at time of writing):
https://zora.co/collect/base:0xeba4551052568406f8c490320b94b6478b81930e/1
At the same time, the wider crypto bull market has been attracting renewed criticism/cynicism from the anti-NFT crowd. Some of this has focused on ticketing, so I thought I'd revisit this subject.
When I discussed this topic back in 2022, I predicted that selling tickets as NFTs would be normalised within 5 years. The fact is, most "tickets" nowadays are already digital. (When was the last time you bought a paper ticket to a show?) Putting them onchain has numerous advantages.
Here are 6 reasons why NFTickets make sense:
  1. Provably limited supply.
  2. Provable authenticity.
  3. Allow-lists reduce risk of bots buying up supply during pre-sale (as happened with Swift).
  4. Removing middlemen like Ticketmaster (who've been known to add on 75% to prices in platform fees) could mean more affordable tickets without artist losing revenue.
  5. You can keep NFTs in your wallet forever as mementos (I wish I still had tickets from life-changing shows I went to as a teen).
  6. Ticket NFTs can retrospectively be given extra utilities (e.g. discount on next show, free merch, access to token-gated experiences etc), becoming part of a potentially life-long connection between artist and fan.
    The combination of 1) and 2) effectively eliminates ticket fraud: if it's not from the official collection, it's a scam.
    Of course, NFTs can still be sold on the secondary market way above their original price, but:
    a) if you've done enough to get on the allow-list, you probably want to go to the show; and
    b) the artist can actually benefit from these sales by collecting secondary royalties (where enforced).
    I've focused here on tickets to in-person events, but of course online events (like livestreamed shows or performances in the metaverse) represent a burgeoning sector where NFTs make even more sense as entry passes. More on that side of things soon.
    P.S. If you liked this post, you can collect it for 99 $BONSAI (~$1.69) and mirror it for a 10% referral reward 🙏
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