How Blockchain is Changing the Events Industry: The CEO’s View

Blockchain-based solutions are changing the face of the event industry, which includes ticket sales, venue purchasing, audience incentivization, event community building and sponsorship sales. We do not consider the opportunity to ride on the hype, but rather use the technology to deliver high-quality service and a high-quality user experience. Wondering how blockchain adoption will benefit the event industry and what kind of magic NFTs and DAOs might work? Learn about it from the CEO of Oaziz, starting with his strong background rooted in one of the world’s largest crypto conferences.

Who is Addy Crezee

Our insider Addy Crezee has been building in the crypto space for 8 years, starting his career as one of the first employees of Cointelegraph in 2014 as a product manager and intrapreneur. He was later promoted to CMO, responsible for facilitating growth. In early 2016, Addy opened his own early-stage Blockchain Investment agency called Investors’ Angel, which helped raise $800k in 6 months. In August 2016, he founded a blockchain conference BlockShow together with Cointelegraph, which has become one of the most significant and influential crypto conferences in the world.

The background rooted in the crypto conference organization gives Addy a thorough understanding of the event industry and the opportunity to exploit its challenges and trends. To kick-start the interview, we asked Addy some strategically important questions.

Interview

NewsBTC: Hi Addy! Thanks for pushing us in! Let’s start with the hottest topic. What problems does the event industry face?

Addie: Thanks for having me guys! If I had to name the top three I would say Iowa community involvement before and after the event, lack of basic sales tools that maximize revenue and profit. The third is a weak investment, co-ownership and cooperation opportunities. Oaziz was built to combat this problem, along with many others.

NewsBTC: As the issues arise, some may want to mention sponsorship sales. Can you comment on that?

Addie: No problem! Since every sponsor is a DAO member, he or she can be the first to buy sponsorship directly from the organizer. Some types of sponsorship may be exclusively available to DAO members / at a special price / to the first applicants, only the organizer decides. You can also offer sponsor slots in an auction that can be held publicly or privately among DAO members. The NFT sponsor machines can even be shared between the DAO members and the open market. Part of the revenue share that the organizer will receive from the sale will go to the community members. The only thing that makes the difference here is the structure of the event in question, not the type of sale.

NewsBTC: Are there any known event DAOs on the market?

Addy: Off the top of my head I can remember SporkDAO by the Ethereum community. They have a $SPORK token and a member-owned festival called ETHDenver. I can’t think of many other names right now, so there’s no risk in assuming that event DAOs aren’t super popular at the moment. The NFT ticket platforms are still peaking. We also have the ticketing feature, along with many others, but mostly our platform is meant to create DAOs for events, create NFT tickets for them, get royalties, tokenize and engage event communities.

NewsBTC: How can the event industry benefit from NFT?

Addy: NFT provides a basis for the industry, users and event organizers. Primarily, NFT assets act as proof of authenticity, a digital document often used for authentication and to secure information on a network. Second, non-fungible tokens act as guarantees of ownership, i.e. a blockchain event ticket belonging to one person. Third, some NFT communities benefit from token gating, which means restricting access and providing exclusive content, rights, or membership to holders. Finally, we have royalties, a perfect engagement and monetization tool. That is what can be done with NFT in the secondary market. In the next 3-5 years, major festivals that welcome hundreds of thousands of attendees, such as Tomorrowland and Coachella, could start making big money from royalties powered by NFT tickets.

NewsBTC: You have mentioned royalties. Can you explain how royalties work?

Addy: It’s actually quite simple. What makes NFT tickets popular is the scale of the event. The bigger the event, the bigger the community and the more expensive the tickets. Unlike regular tickets, NFT tickets can be resold an unlimited number of times, and each sale will provide the promoter with royalties. The ERC1155 standard allows developers to specify any specified royalties.

NewsBTC: Wow, that’s good! Any other reasons why an NFT ticket is better than a regular one?

Addy: Yes, NFT tickets have other benefits as well. For example, if the event has a community, participants are interested in collecting items called digital memories. NFT memorabilia from Coachella or, for example, the last Michael Jackson show will go up in price. As a result, collectors can profit from rare and collectible NFTs even after the event is long over. Also, NFTs can give you special discounts, items, etc.

NewsBTC: It’s cool! What is it for users and developers?

Addy: Well, you can actually be both. DAO users can contribute to the community, both in the DAO framework and in the subDAO structure. With developers on the payroll, literally, any user can submit ideas on a competitive basis to participate in their favorite events.

NewsBTC: So what are the core features of your platform?

Addy: Inside Oaziz, you will be able to tokenize your event communities, engage and monetize them with NFT tickets and memberships, reward contributors with tokens, launch events together and bring them to market, benefiting the community. The NFTs range from tickets to sponsorships to community bonuses. A multi-level membership is another beneficial option for DAO creators. For example, DAO membership may include three tiers that share the proceeds of the entire event: 10 founding members, 100 investors who are ready to contribute, and 1,000 community members who can purchase NFTs for the privilege.

NewsBTC: Are there any special features and rewards for users and event organizers?

Addy: Certainly! In addition to participating in events, users will create events independently and also search for events they want to help organize and invest in. Users, organizers and the platform will benefit from each event. A certain share of the income will be sent to the DAO fund. For example, if the trade value is 9k, 1k goes to the DAO treasury and is shared proportionally by all participants.

NewsBTC: Sounds solid! You have pointed to low community involvement as the biggest problem in the industry. Why is community so important?

Addy: Thanks to the active community, the life of the event will not end when the event ends. We use membership to keep users coming for more. There are a number of tools such as a voting system, talent search, reputation and many more engaging activities. We recognize that a healthy year-round event cycle is key.

NewsBTC: Okay, we got it! At the end of the day, what is the future of the event industry?

Addy: Blockchain *chuckles* and vain Web 3 instruments. It’s time to unlock the benefits of NFT tickets. By turning tickets into blockchain collectibles and presenting royalties, we also provide users with digital memories. This feature helps users merge into life-changing, unique event experiences. In addition, NFT owners get a profitable item. At the end of the day, who doesn’t want digital memories that you can cash out on?

NewsBTC: Our last question. Addy, can you comment on the Oaziz roadmap?

Addy: The solutions that we can already offer are building tools that the market needs now. The closest target would be NFT Memories, a free proof-of-attendance digital engagement tool. We will launch NFT tickets and token gating immediately after that. By the end of the year, we’ll be implementing other DAO tools to make it super easy to scale and monetize events like never before.

Last word

The takeaway from Addy’s words will be that blockchain enables far more than just decentralized event organisation. The latest trends in the event industry indicate that we will soon easily create token-gated events and sell tickets as NFTs thereby increasing their value. Increasing revenues and profits that all participants share within event DAOs, that’s what the Oaziz DAO boss is thinking about. We consider his ideas and how the launch of the announced features will benefit the events industry at large.