Blockchain company and Ticketmaster competitor moves to St. Petersburg

In a conference room at the Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort on Wednesday, guests stood as speakers blasted Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”

Then the president of the St. Petersburg Economic Development Corporation, JP DuBuque, introduced the latest company to move to St. Petersburg: Relic Tickets, a blockchain event platform from Lakeland.

Their goal? To solve the pain that both customers and venues feel when using other ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster.

Relic Tickets uses blockchain technology, a digital ledger that duplicates transaction records to a decentralized network of computers, to limit fraud and scalping, collect “unique data” and offer event benefits as collectable NFTs also called non-fungible tokens.

Ticketing problems escalated when Swift launched her Era’s stadium tour and people waited in lines for hours only to lose tickets after the site was overwhelmed by fans and bots. The US Justice Department said it was investigating Ticketmaster’s parent company LiveNation, before the Swift ticket debacle, to see if it violated antitrust laws. The company also faced congressional hearings where senators from both sides questioned the company as to whether it was a monopoly.

Relic aims to use the transparency features of blockchain to help solve many pain points experienced in ticket sales, whether it’s setting limits on how much they can be resold for.

“For every single ticket you buy, we can implement rules depending on what events it is — live entertainment, music, festivals, whatever,” Relic co-founder Hunter Abramson said at Vinoy.

The company was founded in Lakeland and needed a new headquarters to grow. Abramson said they were originally set on moving to startup hub Austin, Texas. They also considered moving to Miami. But when someone pitched St. Petersburg, they reconsidered after talking to companies in the area.

“Relic is built on respect, integrity and community. We’re working to recreate an entire ecosystem that desperately needs to feel that way,” Abramson said in a statement. “It’s clear that we need to be in a vibrant city that believes in and invests in community and innovation, all wrapped up in a fantastic quality of life.”

Relic will begin working out of the Thrive DTSP co-working space while it searches for an official headquarters in St. Petersburg. The company stated that it will grow to have 20 to 30 employees in the city within a few years.