1 Introduction

Scalpers, ticket touts, black market sellers, and secondary ticketers are all terms used to describe people and organizations that profit from the reselling of tickets without adding any value to the industry. In many countries, primary ticketing organizations and other stakeholders have attempted to restrict the secondary market, but these initiatives offer little protection to the consumer. Though secondary ticketing organizations facilitate a free market and match high ticket demands with similar offers, resellers are denounced by fans and artists alike, who criticize resellers for deceptive tactics and exorbitant price hikes. Blockchain based tickets are a solution to this problem and various other issues the ticketing industry faces. GUTS Tickets, an operational smart ticketing company, has pioneered such a solution. By offering an blockchain protocol, that can be used as a back-bone API/protocol for ticketing companies, the GET Foundation will drive this effort to revolutionize the ticketing sector and create an industry wide paradigm shift that will result in completely honest and transparent ticketing value streams for all actors.

Artificial scarcity and fraud Professional resellers create unnecessary scarcity in the ticket-acquisition process, creating confusion about the price and availability of tickets. Their intrusion into the process imposes a burden on fans and threatens artists’ revenue from live performances: events which are becoming increasingly crucial to artists’ success. Instances of ticket fraud compound these problems, as many fans are denied access to events because they were sold an invalid, fake, or already scanned ticket.