As we mentioned in our previous blog post, working closely with the ticketing industry is a critical part of shaping our future here — both in terms of the roadmap for the Aventus Protocol itself, and in terms of building out services and API-based connectivities as part of the Artos SaaS offering.

Last week in London we held a roundtable with some of the movers, shakers and thinkers of the music events ticketing world, to get their ideas on current challenges faced by the industry and answer their questions about blockchain’s potential place within the events landscape. Participants with ticketing experience gained at primary ticketing agencies, event promoters, and venues, as well as consumer advocates and government representatives were in attendance.

The resulting conversation — held under Chatham House rules to encourage an open and candid approach — was both warm and spirited. There was an acknowledgement of long-standing challenges, and an openness to new approaches to solving these; though with the dollop of healthy scepticism characteristic of an industry that has been facing systemic challenges for many years!

Many attendees expressed frustration at unethical behaviours by some individuals and organisations within the secondary market, with one delegate explaining that “you spend time fixing a problem with companies breaking the rules and as soon as you’ve fixed it, they’ve found a way around your fix.”

On top of a perception of futility when it comes to creating controls, there was also the concern that even if new technologies such as blockchain and beacons might offer a potential fix, there would be barriers when it came to consumer education and access control on the door. While millennials can broadly be relied upon to be reasonably tech-savvy smartphone-carriers, this is less guaranteed for other demographics.

“Come to one of our events and watch the behaviour of the consumers at the entrance, then watch the behaviour of front-of-house staff: people are not good at interacting with technology,” said one attendee.

These types of considerations will be key to the development of user-facing apps and services integrated into the blockchain, and are driving the product roadmap for Artos services. Some of the current and future requirements being looked at by Artos as a SaaS offering include inventory management services, user-friendly ticket wallets, and integration with micro-sales social channels.

Attendees at the roundtable were keen to emphasise the importance of relationships within the live music industry with regard to ticketing: as one attendee put it, “a lot of the industry is based on conversations and not contracts”. The distributed, decentralised nature of the blockchain aims to provide a collaborative ecosystem that will underpin and support these dispersed and complex relationships, while alleviating some pitfalls and creating new efficiencies.

For example, once an agreement has been made for part of the supply chain to receive an allocation of tickets from the available inventory for an event, the rightsholder can whitelist them on the blockchain, with rules set around how much inventory they receive, how it can be used and how revenue is split across parties. In this way, the blockchain offers tools to define, clarity, support, enhance and audit pre-existing relationships within the ticketing landscape, as well as offering opportunities to more easily forge new ones.

We plan to continue to engage closely with the ticketing industry as a whole to help us develop solutions that work to the benefit of all. While the focus of this roundtable was predominantly upon primary ticketing agents in the music events space, future roundtables are being planned to discuss the concerns and considerations of players such as secondary ticketing agents, artists/performers and venues across event verticals including music, theatre and sports. If you’re interested in becoming a part of one of these open discussions, please drop us a line at info@aventus.io.