The Hekwerk Ticketing Deal | 1 million tickets in 2019
We are proud to announce our first contractual agreement with the mayor ticketing company Hekwerk Theaterproducties. If you have been following GUTS for the last couple of months you'll know that GUTS has run several pilot events for three separate shows of Jochem Myjer, one of best-known Dutch comedians. These pilots covered the full spectrum of the event ticketing process, selling the tickets, settling revenue and costs of the sold tickets, monitoring the internal secondary ticket trade between consumers on the protocol, offer customer support and of course eventually verifying the smart tickets validness at the entrance of the venue.
Showcasing the smart ticketing use case
Not only did the set of pilots test our theoretical assumptions about smart ticketing in the real world, it also gave GUTS the opportunity to demonstrate that using blockchain technology doesn't have to be hard, expensive or even noticeable for the end user interacting with the smart and dynamic ticket front-end.
In this blog we'll discuss what we have learned from these pilot events, in what way these lessons tested our assumptions on smart ticketing and most importantly if this series of pilots have changed our vision on the future of blockchain based digital ticketing.
The problem we are solving
With Jochem being one of the Netherlands’ most popular comedians, tickets for his shows are naturally in high demand. This scarcity creates a lucrative secondary market that rips off his most loyal fans, this to great frustration of the artist, Jochem Myjer, himself. The screen capture displayed below displays what the practical consequences of this scarcity-by-popularity. The victims here, fans of Jochem that where not able to acquire a ticket during the initial and official sale, are getting screwed. The secondary ticketers and the platforms they use add no value and are making margins on these sales above and beyond of the margins of the actual organizer and initiator, Hekwerk.
Artists intentionally price their tickets at a reasonable price point to exclude nobody and therefore are highly frustrated by the secondary ticketeers. To add insult to injury, the tickets sold on these platforms are not even guaranteed to be legitimate, as there is no way of verifying if the QR code sold on the ticket isn't already sold, used or even 'real'.
About the final pilot
On Thursday 5 October at 12:00 local time the ticket sale of two Jochem Myjer shows in the Nieuwe Luxor, one of the largest theatres in the country, in Rotterdam would commence. Due to the difficulties experienced during the previous Jochem Myjer sale, which you can read about in this post, several changes where made to the smart ticketing application that would ensure that the ticketing application would be able to register the ticket ownership surge on the blockchain. In the weeks leading up to the sale countless tests, benchmarks and simulations where conducted the results of which all indicated our application was ready for the expected heat, but you never know for sure.
At exactly 12:27 the answer was in. The sale was a big success! 3000 tickets where sold to actual verified fans! Averaging 100 tickets sold per minute. All the while the server on which the application was running never broke a sweat, with server load peaking at 3% during the entire sale.
In conclusion, GUTS is definitely up for a bigger challenge. Bring. It. On.
Making up the score
During and before the sale the GUTS support team received a relatively low amount of support tickets, indicating that the UX design served its job in communicating and explaining the new and rather unconventional way of digital/dynamic event tickets. By monitoring Twitter we did notice several disappointed fans that complained that they weren't able to acquire a ticket. (take note; more than 12 000 people where in the applications waiting line with only 3 000 tickets being available for sale, additionally note that each individual in this queue will probably buy two or more tickets making the total ticket demand for the two shows at least 25/30k)
More metrics
On the day of the sale more than 46 000+ people visited the waiting line of the ticketing application. When a users was let through the queue the average flow-through time was 1:11 minutes. This means that it took on average less than 2 minutes for a consumer to: 1. Creating an account on the app, 2. Confirming their uniqueness by means of SMS verification 3. Selecting the seats and 4. Paying for their tickets!
In the back-end each new buyer was assigned their own Ethereum smart wallet after which the ownership of the bought tickets was directly assigned to this consumer by the ticketing contract. These ownership changes can observed on the Etherscan links provided above. Currently no GET was exchanged to the consumers wallet yet, but as you may well know this will change soon…
Testing what matters
At GUTS we are aware of the fact that selling tickets for an event without crashing your website isn't exactly the type of technological accomplishment that would warrant an ICO worth millions. In order to prevent death by 'a keyboard to the head' I do want to take this opportunity to state that handling thousands of requests per second requires a well-designed and robust back-end. As getting strangled by my own Ledger wallet-cord isn't my preferred way to go either, I also want to acknowledge the front-end development team in their continuous efforts to ensure that the waiting line page dynamically informed customers on their place in line. Expectation management is key when you know the majority of people won't be able to acquire a ticket. Having all these bases covered, lets come to the point.
The GUTS blockchain ticketing vision
As pointed out in the roadmap blog post GUTS Tickets will approach the ticketing market from two angles. The fully operational ticketing company GUTS Tickets will act as the B2C player, approaching and convincing event organizers and artists directly to start using its smart ticketing application which is built upon the GET-protocol's blockchain foundation. GUTS Tickets is specialized in building scalable and user-friendly consumer facing software that just works. The blockchain magic will happen out of view of the consumer, after all we are not selling crypto, we are selling tickets.
GUTS Tickets will always use the GET-protocol as its blockchain protocol and will therefore generate a constant demand for GET.
The GET-protocol powered by the GET-Protocol Foundation will approach the B2B market by offering an open protocol powered by GET for other ticketing companies to use. More on the GET-protocol architecture in future blog posts!
GET Utility
For a few months now we have been hinting that something big and quantifiable was coming up. At the end of the day beautifully designed wire frames, sandbox environments that sell smart ticket or even walls of texts of some random dude on Slack like me don't really create an actual and sustainable demand for a token. We believe in creating a long term value base by making the token a real smart ticketing utility. Hype might get you to the moon at some point but sooner or later gravity will have you pay its dues.
About Hekwerk Theaterproducties BV
With more than 20 top artists and comedians under their management this company entertains hundreds of thousands of visitors on a yearly basis. With names as Jochem Myjer, Youp van ‘t Hek en Veldhuis en Kemper, Hekwerk is one of Holland’s most prominent event organizers in the Dutch theatre scene.
Announcing: The GUTS Hekwerk Deal!
Last week GUTS Tickets signed an contractual agreement with Hekwerk that establishes that GUTS Tickets will be the 'preferred' ticketing supplier for the high-volume/high-demand Hekwerk events. The roll-out period depends on how well GUTS Tickets is able to scale up its services and how well it is performing overall. Hekwerk has the intention that, considering the service provided by GUTS is up to their expectations, they will incrementally move a significant section their ticketing needs to the GUTS Tickets system within 2 to 4 years.
Talking numbers:
- Hekwerk sells 310 000 tickets per year.
- Hekwerk organizes 700 shows per year.
- Hekwerk hosts shows in every theatre in the Netherlands (388 in total).
“The answer on illegal ticket trade!”
Robert-Jan Veen | Hekwerk
Additional benefits of the deal
Having Hekwerk on board as launching partner means that the GUTS Tickets will be used in every theatre in the Netherlands, hereby giving the GET-protocol a huge platform possible to show the advantages of our tech. Do you think GUTS will limit to the Netherlands? Fine. Hold my beer.
Not convinced yet?
Is our smart ticketing application perfect at this moment? No. Are we improving it with feedback of real clients and events? Sure thing. Does it work? Definitely, try it yourself. Could it use more blockchain? Hell yes. What would blockchain add to event ticketing? A ticket with crypto elements can also hold value that can be used for paying reselling fees, buying beers/drinks at the event and a lot more. Read our white paper! Why not use Ether? The GET-protocol and its token offers a price locking mechanism, ensuring zero volatility risk for all actors. Utility first, crypto second. Remember this product is for mass-market consumers, not forex traders!
More about the GET-protocol ICO
If you want know more about the GET Initial Coin Offering, read our white paper, visit ICO website, sign up for our Rocket Chat, join our Telegram or get yourself a smart event ticket in our sandbox environment.
