Ticketmaster debuts NFT-Gated ticket sales, starting with Avenged Sevenfold

Within Web3 society, NFTs has been used as an entry card for both digital rooms and live events, serving benefits to holders. Now ticketing giant Ticketmaster can bring token gating to a much larger audience with the launch of a feature that allows artists to offer special access to concert and event tickets for qualified NFT holders.

Ticketmaster announced today that Ethereum The NFT token gating feature is live for artists and was developed in collaboration with the popular metal band Avenged Sevenfold, who have their own Deathbats Club NFT collection and tested the token gating function ahead of full rollout.

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 around 1,000 tickets were bought in total between the two shows with the NFT gate feature.

“It went amazing,” Sanders said Decrypt of the ticket test.

During the purchase process, Sanders said, Ticketmaster will ask users to connect a wallet to verify ownership of one of the eligible NFTs. After that, it’s effectively the same buying process as usual, but with less competition fighting for a small pool of tickets.

“It’s a normal process after that,” he said, “except without the 1,000-person queue and without the scalpers and bots coming in there and taking everything at once.”

Today, Avenged Sevenfold announced the first North American leg of their “Life is But a Dream…” tour, with 13 more shows in Chicago, Montreal, Minneapolis and beyond. For all 13 shows, Deathbats Club NFT holders will have an exclusive pre-sale running from now until Tuesday afternoon, with certain sections reserved at each venue for club members.

Ticketmaster developed the feature in collaboration with the band and the Web3 team, Bit flip, which creates artist-centric NFT projects. Sanders told Decrypt that he first connected with David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s EVP of Global Music, at last year’s NFT LA conference and that discussion led to the creation of the token-gating feature.

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

He added that Ticketmaster has minted nearly 15 million digital collectibles related to events, including NFL games, via Flow blockchain and 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.

“Avenged Sevenfold used the opportunity to offer first-time access to tickets, but there are a number of ways it can be used by artists in the future, from unlocking premium seats to special experiences like sitting in on soundchecks,” said Marcus. “It’s really a blank slate for the artist to decide.”

Deathbats Club prices have shot up in recent weeks as Avenged Sevenfold started the ticket trial and also held an alternate reality game (ARG) linked to the new album which included an NFT coin.

According to data from NFTgothe floor price – or the price of the cheapest NFT on a marketplace – more than doubled over the past month to an all-time high of 0.17 ETH ($300).

To Deathbats and beyond

Sanders is deeply immersed in Web3. In addition to launching the band’s own NFT collection in December 2021, he also owns high value CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, among others.

He told Decrypt that he is “still in the business of being a degen”, but that the club was ultimately started with a vision to better connect the fans to the group.

In addition to creating a tokenized community of like-minded fans, he envisioned NFTs as essential to replicating fan engagement and loyalty rewards. But it was only going to work on a large scale, he said, if big, entrenched companies also got involved — firms like Spotify, which have been experiment with token-gate functionsand indeed Ticketmaster as well.

“One thing I always told people is we needed other players to get involved,” Sanders said. “But you’re dealing with all these legacy companies with old code competing with new code, and things that want to break, and so you have to take things slowly,” he said.

But even with 10,000 NFTs, the Deathbats Club is a relatively small club for a band as popular as Avenged Sevenfold, who have sold over 8 million albums and play arena-sized venues like Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum. Also, not every die-hard fan will buy a $300 or more digital membership card.

That’s why the band is soon launching an NFT-based loyalty program on Polygon that allows fans to connect a wallet and claim a free ticket pass. This pass will allow fans to take advantage of certain NFT gated pre-sales and other potential benefits, but anyone (even scalpers) can grab the free “Tier 1” pass. However, it is only a starting point.

Sanders said the band will offer a variety of ways for fans of the band to unlock more NFTs that can be used to upgrade that pass for even more exclusive access and benefits.

Avenged Sevenfold will attach claimable NFTs to items, such as seen in the tweet aboveas well as CDs and vinyl releases, plus it will issue POAPs– like digital ticket stubs – at performances.

It also plans to send tickets to top listeners on Spotify, for example. The goal is to reward the band’s die-hard fans for what they already do, rather than making them buy something extra.

“I think it’s a pretty cool thing that scanning these things actually matters,” Sanders said of tokenized goods and event POAPs. “It proves that you’re very dedicated or involved with the band. And I think those are the people we should make sure to get tickets to.”

However, Sanders and the band have faced resistance from some fans for experimenting with NFTs, and he knows not everyone will be keen to participate.

He said instead of arguing with them – “I tried it, but there is no gain,” he admitted – the band simply aims to show “by example” that the feature has concrete benefits that are worth taking a crypto wallet for.

“We try to make it easy for them,” he said. “The whole point is, the more wallets we can get to people, the more things we can do for free, and the more people will understand.”