Zarracina: Blockchain tickets are sound
DOC.BLOCK: The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts is a True Tickets client. (Help location)
Cryptocurrency influences technical perceptions
The sudden collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is likely to rattle some people’s confidence in the underlying technology known as blockchain, but the platform is healthy when it comes to live event tickets and offers advantages over older systems, according to Matt Zarracina, the co-founder and CEO director of True Tickets.
The company has been using blockchain technology since its founding in 2017.
Blockchain, by definition, is an advanced database mechanism that allows transparent information in a business network that stores data in blocks linked together in a chain. It can be used to create a ledger for tracking orders, payments, accounts and other transactions, backed by security tools to prevent unauthorized transactions.
The difference between cryptocurrency, a digital form of currency that uses blockchain technology, and the broader platform, which has applications
beyond trading crypto, is a distinction that may be lost on some people, Zarracina said.
Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, was asked by a CNBC interviewer on Wednesday whether blockchain technology at all has received a black eye as a result of the FTX debacle, but he said that IBM would continue to invest in the technology given its growth potential. within fintech and other industries.
“FTX is essentially the Lehman Brothers of crypto,” Zarracina said. “It’s not the greatest analogy, but you had mortgage-backed securities that were high-risk assets packaged as low-risk assets, which resulted in the mortgage crisis, but that didn’t stop people from using mortgages to buy homes. People lost their homes, just as people lost assets in the FTX debacle, and that resulted in regulation, and that’s what you’re going to see in the crypto space.”
Matt Zarracina
The impact on perceptions of blockchain technology in general remains to be seen, he said.
“But I’d be hard-pressed to think that there’s not going to be some kind of negative perception applied to blockchain just because the technologies are so closely interconnected. That said, those who are building blockchain-enabled solutions, what you’re seeing now is much more a focus on the bottom line, solving the problem at the industry level, at the user level, and that’s getting back to almost basic product management,” Zarracina said.
The technology is increasingly in the background and it’s the future, he said, noting that just the word blockchain caused such hype a few years ago that a hard iced tea company more than tripled in value after changing its name from Long Island Iced Tea Corp. to Long Blockchain Corp. The company was later delisted by NASDAQ and the SEC filed insider trading charges against several investors.
As for True Tickets, which continues to grow in performing arts and theater with clients such as the Shubert Organization, partnerships with 750-member Tessitura Network and Logitix and a growing list of venue clients such as the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California; Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando; and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri. The future looks as bright as ever, Zarracina said.
“We launched a major new feature, rules-based ticket sharing, the first of its kind in the industry, and it’s having a pretty significant impact on our customers,” he said. “We are still reducing unwanted activity on the secondary market, but our venues receive and share customer data about ticket sharing. We calculate on average, for about every three tickets shared, one new registration or name change in our customers’ databases, and we should reach 100,000 tickets shared between our 11 to 12 customers by the end of this month, and it’s been live for about 3 ½ months. We’re pretty excited about the future and how it works.”
Zarracina said theaters and performing arts centers are a “niche market” for True Tickets, and the platform and APIs are scalable for larger venues and events and can provide the kind of security, customer data and stability unmatched in legacy systems.
“It’s the first market we could really get into, prove our value proposition, demonstrate impact that can be scaled to other sectors in the live experience space,” he said. “I always see it as an important market. We were one of the few suppliers who have been able to crack the code and work effectively with art from a ticketing perspective.”
New opportunities include expanding partnerships with the Shubert Organization and Logitix and some of the company’s partners, he said.
Allowing clients to enable ticket sharing under enforceable rules is a precursor to a rules-based resale marketplace “and that’s where what we’ve built becomes really powerful,” Zarracina said.
When asked if True Tickets — which incorporated in September 2017 and raised $250,000 in an initial round of funding from friends and family in January 2018 — was headed for an initial public offering, Zarracina said most startups end up as acquisition targets .
True Tickets has since received funding from a variety of sources, including an investment in 2020 by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who joined the company as a strategic advisor following an investment by Broadway Beta Ventures, a subsidiary of Zuckerberg Media.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional quotes and details.
