Update January ’19

It’s nearly February, which means that the new year’s resolutions have been forgotten and there is a nice monthly update blog for you to feast your eyes on. This time we have lots of real-world ticket action, some industry shoulder rubbing and a juicy technological update.

Media coverage

English:

GUTS Tickets: Use dynamic pricing to raise funds for charity

The Ultimate Guide to Small Market Cap Cryptocurrencies.

Dutch:

Jochem Myjer tickets zonder woekerprijzen dankzij blockchainplatform GUTS

Wilminktheater past kaartverkoop Jochem Myjer aan.

Korean:

암표 문제를 해결하는 티켓팅 플랫폼 ‘GUTS(굿츠)’.

Italian:

Vendere I Biglietti Dei Concerti Legalmente con GUTS Tickets.

Recent events:

Feedback from the field

This month, Jochem Myjer started performing his enormous batch of shows at the Royal Theater Carré. The same batch of shows for which tickets were sold during the big sale of 50.000+ tickets in September ‘18.

After all of the build-up to these events, it was good to get underway and actually process the tickets that had been sold. (By the way, you can always monitor tickets being sold and resold on the blockchain on Etherscan here.) Carré is a prestigious theater with lots of seats and frequent visitors that demand an excellent experience. In other words; pressure!

Old theater, new technology.

Things went well! The scanning of tickets went smoothly (nearly all people had their phones with the QR codes out upon arrival), lines moved quickly and the responses were positive.

One thing that really stuck out was a response from someone working at the venue, who remarked that visitors were very easily finding their seats. The interpretation given for this, was that since the exact seat numbers are released only a day before the show, people are far more aware of them, which leads to visitors knowing where they need to go and thus speeding up the process of entrance for everyone.

Sometimes, the show must not go on

The last thing anybody wants is of course for a show to get cancelled — especially at the last minute. Unfortunately, life doesn’t give a shit about what anybody wants. Things happen and you must react accordingly.

As anyone with a family member who claims to hold supernatural powers can tell you, bad things always come in threes. That explains why this month not one or two, but three shows had to be cancelled at the very last minute, due to health issues of the performers.

That’s life, and what’s also life is the fact that there are then hundreds of people who have tickets for these events that need to be notified. In the latest of the three, the show was cancelled two hours before the doors were supposed to open.

With traditional ticketing, this would have meant a lot of chaos. With traditional (static) tickets, you are unsure whether the person who bought the ticket is actually still in possession of it, or if he/she has resold it or passed it along. Therefore, reaching all of the actual ticket holders before they make the trip to the venue is next to impossible. Sending out e-mails doesn’t guarantee that they will be read on such a short basis, and again, there is no way to know if you even reach the right person. This results in lots of disappointed people at your venue.

Luckily, the protocol allows an event organizer to directly view who is in possession of smart tickets for every specific show, along with their mobile phone numbers. That’s why we were able to send out text messages informing these ticket holders that the show was not going to be happening that night.

While of course an unfortunate situation, this feature prevented a huge amount of additional disappointment and frustration from visitors traveling from far and wide and actually showing up to a closed door. The shows were rescheduled, for which the existing tickets were automatically transferred. People who couldn’t attend on the new date could easily put their ticket up for sale, although over 90% of the people kept their tickets. This process meant a lot less hassle for both visitor and event organizers (no tickets needed to be refunded and less costs had to be made.

In other words, a good chance to show how smart ticketing can improve an event in a lot of different ways. Even when it doesn’t end up taking place.

Random acts of kindness

Twitter can be somewhat of a soul-sucking playground, designed for succubuses and demagogues alike to run free and ruin all hope for humanity. But, just sometimes, it’s actually kind of nice. Especially when tweets like these pop up:

Translation: ‘Since I’ve sold my tickets through GUTS Tickets, not a single one of my tickets is being resold for a profit by touts. That makes me extremely happy! It took some doing to get it done, but we’ve succeeded. Fuck the frauds!’

That is of course one of Holland’s most popular comedians, Jochem Myjer, sharing the great news that since working with GUTS Tickets, none of his tickets have been scalped. Not only did he tweet this, he also shared it on Instagram and Facebook, to a total of 2 million followers.

As if that in itself isn’t enough, we were amazed by the hundreds of positive responses from Jochem’s fans. Not to toot our own horn too much, but we really want to share a few of our favorites with you:

Translation: With pain in my heart I recently had to sell my 3 tickets to Jochem Carré, was curious how that would go but it was easy and a day later the money was back on my bank account.

Translation: This system is great! All tickets should be sold this way!

Translation: Not to mention it’s an easy and user-friendly system.

This is of course the most ideal type of publicity and it has already caused a heap of new interest, from artists and venues. It’s also great to see that fans and those on the organising side of things now clearly understand the benefits of working with GUTS & GET Protocol.

Of course we will do everything in our power to make Jochem an even happier man, along with everyone else who makes the choice to go for honest ticketing.