Blockchain meets football at the 2020 UEFA Euro Tournament, led by AlphaWallet. This innovation will mark the largest display of public blockchain ticketing solutions seen in the sports entertainment sector globally, and will expose millions of football fans to crypto for the first time.
AlphaWallet had previously tested this approach to tokenising tickets on blockchain at the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. During this global event, AlphaWallet set out to solve some of the biggest problems plaguing the ticketing industry, namely fraud and lack of regulation in the secondary market.
To learn more, Digital Journal spoke with AlphaWallet CEO Victor Zhang.
Digital Journal: In general, how important is blockchain for businesses?
Victor Zhang: Blockchain is immensely important for modern businesses. In today’s global economy, blockchain serves the role of what trusted third parties have played in economies of the past. To derive its practical use, knowing its role is not enough, we must understand its utility to the world economy and the Internet. Blockchain – as the trusted third parties – can achieve two primary functions for global businesses:
Provide a frictionless market.
Integration of the web.
Tokens are the enabler of these two primary functions. We define the technique to make it happen in “Tokenisation”.
Tokenised rights can be traded on the market and integrated across systems, forming a frictionless market and allowing limitless integration.
Everyone benefiting from technology-enabled free markets.
The remarkable blockchain speculations that took place in 2017 – 2018 brought everyone’s attention to crypto tokens. As we bought and sold them, we forgot their intended purpose was to be used; this is analogous to the housing bubble in which people forgot that houses were not merely speculative assets but rather a place to live.
Despite the great folly in 2017-2018, it is not a bad thing to initially focus on tokens. In 5 to 10 years from now, if you ask a business ‘Do you have tokens?’ they will have the same feeling as if you ask them, ‘Do you have a website?’
DJ: What are the details behind the UEFA ticketing partnership?
Zhang: We confirmed a partnership with UEFA’s Exclusive Sales Agent (Shankai) on October 23rd, 2019 to tokenize +20,000 official VIP tickets using blockchain. We also had a previous experience with Shankai when they were the Exclusive Sales Agent during the FIFA World Cup 2018. Basically, the UEFA Exclusive Sales Agent provides money, tickets and trust anchor, we provide technologies.
DJ: What are the different benefits that blockchain brings to consumers/attendees, event organizers, and artists?
Zhang:Let’s look at the benefits from 2 angles which are also the main utilities of blockchain:
Market
Consumers
Lower ticket prices, due to a healthier and more efficient marketplace
No more fake tickets.
Can buy tickets at any time
Can buy tickets from anyone
Atomic DvP, 100% get the ticket at the same time when you pay
Event Organizers and Artists
Make the market more open and more efficient
The entire process of ticket circulation can be monitored (both Primary and Secondary market).
The entire process of ticket circulation can be controlled. Various rules can be defined using smart contracts to achieve regulation of the primary and secondary markets, and even get a cut from the secondary market transactions
Anyone can participate
Atomic DvP, 100% get the money at the same time when you delivery the ticket
Integration
For example, a user can access the UEFA’s official partners’ services to enjoy discount on accommodation, flights, insurance, land transport, shopping, food and whatever services without signing up for an account with each service and go through the long process to verify you really have a real ticket. Service providers can verify a user’s ticket without connecting to UEFA’s ticketing system.
Other benefits are for:
Event Organizers and Artists
Allowed unlimited service integrations through the ticket token without doing the traditional system integrations. Each ticket is an open API in the user’s hand.
No more complicated business and tech process to integrate 3rd party services.
Unlimited service integrations.
Consumers
Improved convenience through integrating services on ticket tokens.
No more paper
No more Sign up/log in
No more Copy/Paste
No more lock into one platform, choose whatever services providers you want.
DJ: What does the announcement mean in terms of the security details for ticket holders?
Zhang:Technically, it provides the same high level of security as Ethereum blockchain. Security is not only about technology, you can make a nuclear-proof safe but you cannot prevent people from giving the key to others.
DJ: What does this mean for regulation of the secondary ticketing market?
Zhang:Basically it means no more primary or secondary market, there will be only one free, open and regulated market. Free means less fractions; Opens mean open to anyone who wants to participate; Regulated means rules are defined using smart contracts.
Various rules can be defined using smart contracts to achieve regulation of the primary and secondary markets. For example, an organizer can create rules for ticket A that, first, it’s only allowed to resell 5 times; second, the resale price cannot exceed 100; 3) the maximum profit for each resale shall not exceed 10%; If the profit is less than 5 percent, UEFA will not charge a profit commission; if it exceeds 5 percent, UEFA will charge 50% profit commission.
With the support of identity attestation, the user’s mobile application(wallet) can be linked with their physical word identity. Which can avoid transfer tickets through transferring the private key, and allow more smart contracts rules to be defined.