A Bot Stole My Seat at the Concert… Again
The ticket sale goes off at 10:00 AM. You’re all set at 9:50 AM, added 4 tickets to your cart, the maximum allowed number. It’s 9:57 AM, you’re focused on the clock and ticking sound mixed with your accelerated heart rate tells you — omg, OMFG, I’m gonna see Adele live, *heavy breathing*, “Hello, it’s me, I’ve been wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet…” has been going rounds in your head. Or in other words you’re thinking: “I’m about to buy a reasonably priced ticket on the primary market, will pay all the taxes and be totally sure that the ticket isn’t fake.” Then at 9:59:57 AM your foot starts to itch real bad, you bend down for 5 seconds, and when you all relieved try to checkout at 9:00:02 you get a sad notification “There are no more tickets available for this show.”
We all know this situation all too well (alright, don’t blame me for exaggeration, but it hurts missing Adele’s concert because of that damn itch. They say that time’s supposed to heal ya. But I ain’t done much healing.)
How that could happen you may wonder? You think — wow, those people have some supernatural ticket buying powers. Well, they don’t, nor they are people at all for that matter. Thanks to technological advancement, it has become rather easy to create a bot who can easily buy a bunch of tickets in no time right that second when the sale starts, and we call that ticket scalping.
So, don’t blame your internet provider, old and laggy computer for not being so fast or an itchy foot for missing the opportunity to purchase a ticket. You had no chance whatsoever, because you’re up for a fight with artificial intelligence and some nerdy, evil guys who want you to spend all your salary, sell your kidney and borrow money from your mom just to see *insert your favorite artist here*. And obviously they’re making huge profit out of your unconditional love and willingness to see your favorite artists no matter what. Sometimes, really huge. Have you heard of Julien Lavallée? Long story short, he has made literally tens of millions by scalping and reselling tickets. One of the most famous cases is Adele’s concert, when tickets with a face value of 45–95 pounds where sometimes sold for staggering 9000 pounds. Well, talk about selling that kidney again, right.
But that is not right. They haven’t done anything to make this concert happen. Sure, either way oftentimes we pay a lot for tickets, but it is because a ton of people have invested their time and resources in that project, and at the end of the day it is a legit business of theirs. This ticket scalping thing is even illegal — countries like the UK and the USA has passed laws against ticketing bots, and many artists like Adele, Mumford and Sons, and Radiohead among others are putting a fight against the scalpers. But that is not much of blocker for those guys, and why would it be — that’s a great, never-ending business of theirs.
Or is it?
We still can find a way
’Cause nothin’ lasts forever
Even cold November rain
Or ticket scalping
/Guns n Roses/
Obviously, there should be a solution for this. And for a surprisingly long time there haven’t been one. However, at last Tixico comes to the rescue and offers a comprehensive solution that solves problems that event organizers, ticket sellers and event attendees face. So, let’s talk technology here a bit.
Tixico is an innovative, blockchain based event management ecosystem, which turns tickets into a virtual asset and offers support to event organizers to fund their events. It reduces counterfeit risk and ensures that resellers can potentially earn money by selling timely purchased tickets to highly requested concerts in a managed and controllable way. Well, that’s a whole lot of functionalities, and stay tuned for next blog posts about them (also, follow our Facebook and Twitter page, as well as visit Telegram to find out more).
From the technical perspective, the protocol layer is based on Ethereum smart contracts. The organizers and other users can interact with these contracts using a front-end web application provided by us or by our partners.
There are a lot of problems in the ticketing market, and likewise — a lot of solutions Tixico offers.
Here’s a brief overview of how this solves the existing problems:
· Second-hand market for tickets of various, including sold-out events;
· Additional income to the organizer of the event from second-hand market;
· Safe ticket trade on the secondary market with significantly reduced risk of fraud;
· Cheaper ticketing service for event organizers;
· Crowdfunding to lower financial risks for event organizers;
· Investment opportunity for users;
· Pre-sale option for supporters of crowdfunded events;
· Domain-specific features.
Tickets can be tied to the holder and can either be used for attending the event or resell within the boundaries set by the event organizer. To prevent off-chain trades with additional markups to tickets, review and report mechanisms will ensure such offenses can be punished. Basically, we’re here to support Adele’s, Ed Sheeran’s and Obama’s mission to stop ticket scalping. Together we can do it!
Perhaps, this seems to be an awful lot to take in — a group of talented people are working on fixing the ticketing market for event organizers and attendees alike, instead of creating bots to scalp tickets themselves. Yes, you got that right. We are here to fix your tix. For more details on the technology itself, different applications of it and functionalities, as well for information on how to become a part of the project, keep your eye on the blog, Facebook page,Twitter and visit us at our Telegram.
