Ticketmaster, Avenged Sevenfold Score With NFT Gating

Event ticketing leader Ticketmaster appears poised to scale an experiment with NFTs that allow holders of certain tokens to gain special access and discounts to events.

As reported by crypto newsletter Decrypt on Monday (March 27), Ticketmaster announced that it is enabling holders of an NFT called Deathbats Club minted for heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold to use the token to access concert tickets and discounts, which can be significant .

According to Decrypt, “In Avenged Sevenfold’s case, owners of the 10,000 Deathbats Club ethereum NFTs were offered early access to purchase tickets to the band’s upcoming arena shows in New York City and Los Angeles in June. Frontman Matt Sanders – who goes by M .Shadows – said about 1,000 tickets were bought in total between the two shows with the NFT gate feature.”

When purchasing Avenged Sevenfold tickets online, Ticketmaster asks holders of the NFTs running on the ethereum blockchain to connect a wallet and verify identity, then the purchase proceeds normally through the event ticketing process.

A Twitter post showed that a Deathbat NFT holder saved around $540 in base price and service fees by using the token, which effectively puts holders in front of ticket buyers, and then extends special discounts if programmed to do so, as it were. in this case for specific shows on the band’s current North American tour.

According to Decrypt, Sanders was instrumental in creating NFT street functions after meeting David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s EVP of Global Music, at the 2022 NFT LA conference, now known as Outer Edge LA.

“Connecting to live shows creates a unique value, and we developed our token gating capabilities based on how artists want to connect their community to their concerts,” Marcus told Decrypt.

According to Decrypt, Ticketmaster has “coined nearly 15 million digital collectibles tied to events, including NFL games, via the Flow blockchain and the ethereum scaling network Polygon. The token gating feature is now available to any artist with their own NFT collection or who has partnered with an NFT community, and the functionality can also unlock other benefits for fans.”

The report added: “In addition to creating a tokenized community of like-minded fans, [Marcus] envisioned NFTs as central to replicating fan engagement and loyalty rewards. But it was only going to work at scale, he said, if big, entrenched companies also got involved — firms like Spotify, which have been experimenting with token-gate capabilities, and indeed Ticketmaster as well.”