Revisiting the Flow and Ticketmaster Partnership in 2023

This article is a summary of the recent Overpriced JPEGs podcast and additional research we conducted.

The podcast featured Adam Barrick, who is responsible for business development and partnerships at Dapper Labs, and Dieter Shirley, co-founder of Dapper Labs and the chief architect of the Flow blockchain.

Recap of the Ticketmaster x Flow Blockchain partnership

The Ticketmaster and Flow blockchain partnership began with commemorative tickets at the Super Bowl and continued throughout 2022 for a variety of events across the entertainment spectrum.

One example of this is the NFL Virtual Commemorative Tickets where the NFL and Ticketmaster offered free commemorative digital tickets to fans who attend selected games.

Initially, Ticketmaster had partnered with Polygon, an Ethereum-based blockchain, before moving to Flow.

Partnership overview: Dapper Labs is supporting Ticketmaster but they are building their own technology on Flow, which is an open platform. This partnership is different from the licensing arrangements Dapper Labs has with sporting leagues.

How the NFTs work: After certain events, ticket holders receive emails with the option to redeem a commemorative ticket NFT.

What you can do with them: For now, the NFTs released simply serve as a keepsake or a reminder of the event.

The impact: In 2022, the partnership led to 2.5m+ active Flow users with more than five million Ticketmaster NFTs on Flow blockchain in just six months up to September.

The longer-term view

Dapper Labs is a very data-oriented testing company, and they are evaluating how commemorative tickets have performed over the last 12 months.

As the NFT space has evolved, they are considering opportunities to create further value for future ticket holders by the nature of tickets being NFTs.

One aim is to bridge the digital and IRL experience, unlocking benefits at the event that can be exclusively accessed by NFT ticket holders. These benefits could include merchandise, concessions, experiences, and more. This is a long-term goal and is not expected in the near term.

The reason for this being a longer-term focus is when they create a large-scale important experience it needs to be seamless and easy for the mainstream to understand.

There is only one time to make a first impression and they don't want to rush a subpar experience.

Part of the existing issues that could be made smoother is the friction of onboarding through wallets and a good mobile experience.

The Role of Hybrid Custody in Making NFT-based Ticketing a Reality

One of the solutions for these obstacles that exist in NFT-based ticketing is Hybrid Custody.

If users need to create a crypto wallet to get a ticket it adds a lot of friction to the onboarding process.

An alternative is for applications like Ticketmaster to have their own custodial wallets. This enables them to easily onboard users through their existing sign-in or social sign-in.

Then when the user wants to trade the NFT or use it in another application (i.e. display in a gallery) they can create and link a crypto wallet to the application's custodial wallet, delegating control.

This enables them to control NFTs in the application's custodial wallet from their own wallet.

It means that users don't need to move NFTs back and forth out of an application to their own wallets.

Relevant NFTs brought through their crypto wallet would automatically appear on Ticketmaster and vice versa.

A cool outcome of this is in the future users would be able to easily and frictionlessly claim Ticketmaster NFTs and NFTs from other applications.

Then users could delegate control over these NFTs to a single crypto wallet if they want to gain the full advantages of decentralisation and composability.

Key takeaway

NFT-based ticketing has great potential, and the partnership between Flow and Ticketmaster is a step in the right direction.

Hybrid Custody is an exciting development that could make NFT-based ticketing a reality for more people.

While there are still obstacles to overcome, the future of NFT-based ticketing looks bright, and we can't wait to see what's next.

For more information on this topic, you can check out the Overpriced JPEGs podcast on YouTube.