Tickets for events have always and will always be in demand
In fact, limited may be somewhat of a generous encapsulation of the current state of the ticketing market: the incumbent ticketing players actually encourage several malpractices. They facilitate scalping (where tickets are resold at inflated prices), provide poor digital experiences, generate weak data and most importantly abuse their status with exorbitant service fees – the average Ticketmaster service fee is 30%.
It is necessary to understand one thing: it is superfans who make up the bulk of a music artist's revenue (superfans generate 50-80% of an artist's overall revenue), yet they only constitute a small percentage of the overall fanbase. This lucrative subset of consumers must be rewarded for their engagement and in turn drive higher engagement, more associated data points and further rewards.
This is a virtuous cycle of value creation for all stakeholders, and importantly, a complete reversal of the current industry dynamics.
Overall, fans deserve more: they deserve to be assured of the legitimacy of the secondary market tickets they may wish to purchase, an assurance achieved with relative ease thanks to progressive technologies like the blockchain which can track and validate the ticket using NFT technology, and encrypt continuous income for event organizers who deserve a slice of the ever-growing secondary market pie – according to Straitsresearch, the global secondary tickets market size was valued at $2.6bn in 2022 and is projected to reach $5.9bn by 2031.
The audience is divided into those who support surge pricing and those who think it is unfair and should be controlled. In reality, according to a YouGov survey, regarding live music more than 71% of British people are against the idea, including 52% who “strongly” oppose surge-pricing.
Therefore it is crucial that new technologies enter the market with new key pillars that can help control the market and bring some new features to compete with existing solutions:
A perfect example is Totom, a new ticketing platform focused on responding to these previous challenges and with their eyes on the future, aiming to revolutionize the existing ticketing models, and at the same time contributing to a better experience for the fans, and a better relationship between those and the promoters.
The ticketing players are sitting on vertically-driven relationships, some own venues other owners management agencies, all seem to get ticket allocation due to established relationships.
Many will say this is not how a fair and efficient market should work, it should be “the best technology wins”.
That may materialize following the outcome of regulatory investigations, or maybe if a new player that enters the market and addresses each problem within one proprietary ecosystem.
If the latter occurs, that player will not only capture a large part of the ticketing market which is expected to grow from $77.49bn in 2023 to $97.36bn by 2028, but most importantly save an industry in desperate need of saving.