The race for honest ‘Formula 1’ tickets

A competition with a clear outcome.

(If you would rather read this in Dutch, click here.)

Last Tuesday marked the start of the ticket sale for a new batch of ‘Formula 1’ shows with racing experts Olav Mol and Jack Plooij. This show is all about sharing stories and inside information about the racing industry. For us, this is a great opportunity to compare the new way of ‘smart ticketing’ to the old ways. That is because a big part of the ticket sale will be done through us, another part will be sold through traditional ways. It’s the A/B test a researcher can only dream of.

For 11 of these shows, the tickets are being sold by GUTS Tickets; for the price of €27,50 (this is the price for the first row, some theaters offer so-called plus-rows or star-rows, which prices could be a bit higher). Using this link you can track the tickets that have been registered to unique users for a specific event in a blockchain explorer. This way of owner registration has many advantages, one of which is easy verification of the fact that you’ve purchased the ticket from the primary seller, in this case the theater.

Apples to apples

GUTS Tickets is not selling the tickets for all of the F1 shows, a number of the shows are being sold through ‘old fashioned’ applications. This gave us a great opportunity to show why making tickets ‘smart’ offers so many advantages.

Even before the tickets for the shows that weren’t being sold by GUTS were for sale, they were already being offered by TopTicketShop for 150% — 200% of the original price, with a high of 64 euros a piece. And we’re not finished yet; on top of that raised price comes a service fee of €12.50 per order. That amount alone is about 40% of the price of the original ticket, and that’s just for the service fee (a.k.a. the trouble of swooping in and buying the ticket only to put it up for sale again).

Below is an overview of the profit margin; on the left side you see the total price for two tickets to the Formula 1 show at TopTicketShop: €130,50. On the right you see the original price for the same tickets at the theater: exactly €55 euros. That’s a price hike of 137,27%. All to be paid by the fan.

Spot the differences!

The cherry on top of the scalp-pie is the fact that TopTicketShop is advertising the tickets on Marktplaats (the Dutch Craigslist), with a starting price of 44 euros (excluding service fee of course).

Snippet from Marktplaats

Driving within the lines

The goal of this article isn’t just to moan about TopTicketShop (okay, well not just that), but this direct parallel of selling similar tickets in two different ways gives the neutral observer some strong material for comparison.

Of course, we’ll be the first to admit that we might be a little biased, but we hope that by continuously presenting cases like this one, it will become clear why we are so passionate. A consumer who only cares about his or her wallet would simply much rather pay €55 than €130.50, but this is also a crystal clear case of a third party forcing their way in between an artist and their fans, only to walk away with the bulk of the profit.

Beyond the financial loss and the ethical issues of rewarding the wrong party, there is also of course the chance that tickets sold by a third party turn out to be fakes, and therefore completely ruining your night out.

Don’t worry, change is coming

Alrighty then! The good news is that our ticketing revolution is picking up steam. One of the F1 shows that went for sale through GUTS Tickets sold out within 12 hours (shout out to the theater in Heerhugowaard) and a few others are projected to sell out very soon. Moreover: last week GUTS Tickets scanned more than 3000 tickets at the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam for Jochem Myjer’s show.

Last week’s Jochem Myjer show was in this theater. Such a joy to fill this venue with the help of our honest tickets.

And we happily continue ticketing new shows, the current offer can be seen here. We are just getting started!

More about GUTS and the GET Protocol

Want to know more? Join our active Telegram community, read our whitepaper, visit the website, or simulate buying a smart ticket from GUTS Tickets in our sandbox environment.