A recap of our first Amsterdam Dance Event
Selling 11.000 tickets to people from 25 different countries for 12 events in 4 days!
This blog was part of the October ’19 update, which you can read in its entirety here.
The madness of Amsterdam Dance Event has come and gone — as Amsterdam licks its wounds and the yellow flags disappear, we finally have the chance to look back at the jam-packed frenzy that was ADE.
Lots of parties, lots of learning
Having over ten thousand (new) people from more than 25 countries sell, resell, share, gift, and use our tickets was a new level of application and usage for us.
Over 11.000 tickets were sold, all to be processed at 12 events within four days. This rate of events taking place was a first for us, and required scaling and creativity from development, scanning and support teams, which is exactly what we are going for.
The dynamic, young and international ADE audience was also a very welcome change from other audience groups that we have come to know from many theater shows or concert. Different audiences means different wishes and behaviour, as we noticed in the following metric:
For our ADE events, between 19–42% (varied per event) of ticket holders resold their tickets. That is a huge number, way higher than any averages we have seen in the hundreds of events we have ticketed previously.
This can be for any reason of course: last-minute changes of partyplans (due to releases of line-ups at other parties for example), cancelled or adjusted travelplans, or just some good ol’ fashioned failed attempts at scalping.
The hectic nature of the hundreds of events also delivered some valuable insights directly from ticket buyers that have helped us evaluate our next steps as far as development and user experience. The big one being that we want to give ticket holders more control in the ways they can sell their tickets, as well as improve how this is displayed and communicated. We are glad to have learned these lessons.
Decentralisation = bad (wait, hear me out)
As devoted followers of either GET or GUTS will probably know, GUTS Tickets has taken pride in being able to eradicate the possibility of tickets to be resold on any external secondary platforms. Here’s a gentle reminder if you were not yet aware of this:
Unfortunately, ADE regulations require that a percentage of all tickets for the events that took part in the conference were to be put up for sale through the ADE website that made use of a different ticketing company that doesn’t regulate reselling.
These tickets could then, of course, be resold through any of the many platforms that scalpers enjoy using because they can make infinite monies from them. In some cases, certain folks use these platforms to take money from people without even sending any tickets to them — a.k.a. fraud, which we are all very concerned about, but somehow lack the time to actively prevent.
Pretending that scalpers and frauds won’t take advantage of the possibilities provided to them is a ridiculously naive opinion, proven absolutely incorrect time and time again.
It’s expressed most often by those who have already achieved their target sales numbers and no longer require to pretend to care about consumers.
Personal bitterness about the state of the ticketing world aside, this forced distribution leads to situations such as the one where tickets for an event that was originally ticketed by GUTS, were up for sale through four different services and platforms — which of course was very confusing.
It also meant that some people who bought their tickets through GUTS saw tickets for the very same event on sale through TicketSwap for 20% below the original purchase price, while they couldn’t change the price they wanted to sell their tickets for, due to the way GUTS works with one price for tickets in the primary and secondary markets — which of course was very confusing.
Furthermore, it meant that some people bought tickets for these events at the ADE website through a different ticketing provider, who then came to GUTS with support questions because they read everywhere that GUTS was the ticketing partner for the event — which of course was, yes, absolutely confusing.
We are proud of our successful solution to ticket fraud and scalping, but of course constantly search for real-life feedback, which arrives through instances and experiences — such as the ones laid out above — to make our system easy and enjoyable for everyone who uses it.
This helps us now adjust our focus and development goals in the (near) future that completely suit the wishes for ticket holders of all demographics and behavior. We can’t wait.
By the way, adoption much?
More about GET Protocol
Any questions or want to know more about what we do? Join our active Telegram community for any questions you might have, read our whitepaper, visit the website, join the discussion on the GET Protocol Reddit. Or get yourself a smart event ticket in our sandbox environment. Download the GUTS Tickets app on iOS or Android.
