DeFy Tickets co-founders Alec Jhangiani, Ramtin Nikzad, and Evan McLaughlin. [Photos, DeFy Tickets; background, istockphoto]
The concert and live event industry is looking to recover from a pandemic, and the newly launched company is looking to make ticket purchases more profitable for everyone.
DeFy Tickets, co-founder of the Fort Worth Festival, an annual Fort Worth music event, has opened a blockchain-based platform. Tickets are sold as non-fungible tokens on this platform. The June performance by Cowtown Crayfish Fest and rap stars Gucci Mane and Lupe Fiasco on April 30th will be the first live concert on the platform.
“There is no reason why no one will use NFT tickets for a period of 5 to 10 years,” Alec Jhangiani, co-founder of DeFy and Fortress Presents, told Dallas Innovates.
“More efficient value transfer”
Like other ticket-buying platforms, using the technology of the Dutch-based GET Protocol Foundation, DeFy contracts with event organizers to offer smart tickets sold as NFTs. The ticket is tied to individual buyers, enabling more security and opportunities for fan involvement, Jhangiani said.
For ticket owners, the blockchain-based smart contract behind the ticket means that they can be sure that the ticket is not fake. Jhangiani said that by linking to NFTs, you can increase the engagement and experience of fans and artists. For example, NFTs can be attached to live performance recordings, artist-issued tokens, etc., and only ticket owners can access them as an additional souvenir to their concert memories, he said.
Can enhance security and prevent peeling
“The idea of NFTs is that you can embed or include something else in your ticket that isn’t necessarily from a regular ticket,” said Jhangiani. “Here, we believe that the ecosystem could be improved in terms of the relationship between artists, organizers and fans, and in terms of more efficient migration of value.”
For artists and event organizers, Jhangiani said the main advantage of the platform is the security and control of the secondary ticket market. Because the ticket is associated with the blockchain, the transfer of that ticket is recorded and fraud is reduced. Also, according to Jhangiani, artists and organizers can prevent tickets from being transferred beyond their original set price or adding additional fees to the transfer, preventing scalping in the secondary market. Useful for.
“Artists and organizers haven’t benefited from the margins that Scalper creates at all. The goal is basically to get rid of it from the whole process,” says Jhangiani. “Every time the ticket is resold, the original selling artist will benefit from it.”
Industry leader to help launch DeFy
Behind the Fortress Festival and co-owner of DeFy, Fortress Presents oversees the strategy and operations of the new platform. Its co-founders, Jhangiani and Ramtin Nikzad, were initially hired as advisors to the DeFy project. However, given their experience at the outdoor music venue Wild Acres Live and Fortress Presents, which also runs DeFy marketer Fortress Creative, they will lead it later. became. The two also helped establish the Lone Star Film Festival.
The DeFy team includes veterans from other industries who help guide and grow its operations. The main ticket operation is Leif Osbakken, a former Senior Account Manager at Eventbrite and Senior Festival Success Specialist at Ticketfly. Supporting the growth strategy is Zach Pharr, who also worked at Eventbrite and was Director of Business Development at FrontGate Tickets. In addition, Evan McLaughlin, co-founder of the mobile betting app Wayger, has joined the DeFy team as co-founder and chief technology officer.
NFT market capitalization is expected to reach $ 80 billion by 2025
Investment company Jeffreys expects NFTs to grow from $ 35 billion in 2022 to over $ 80 billion by 2025, and DeFy sees many opportunities for the ticket market to grow. .. In addition to announcing upcoming concerts, Jhangiani states that NFT tickets are used for almost everything that needs to be booked, including restaurant reservations, hotel reservations, and plane tickets.
“Our priority is to showcase this very solid use case and its benefits and spread the word about how many different applications there are,” said Jhangiani.
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