Join us on The Future of NFTs podcast as we explore NFT Tickets' impact on event experiences with Divya Prashanth, Peter Hui, and David Lane. Discover their Web3 journey and insights into NFT adoption. From personalized experiences to AI integration, we uncover how NFTs are reshaping events. Explore their role in sports, collectibles, and community engagement, all while ensuring blockchain security. Gain wisdom on NFT adoption and Web3's transformative potential, and receive advice for aspiring NFT enthusiasts. Don't miss this insightful discussion on the future of NFTs in event ticketing!

NFT Tickets shaping event experiences

Participants:

Nadja Bester (CEO & Co-founder of AdLunam)

David Lane (CEO of SI Tickets)

Peter Hui ( Co-founder of Moongate)

Divya Prashanth (CEO of HQNFTs)

Hey, web3 world. This is your host, Nadja Bester, back for episode 3 of season 3 of the Future of NFTs. Future of NFTs is sponsored by AdLunam, a web3 fundraising accelerator and investment ecosystem. We work with early stage startups to achieve institutional and retail fundraising success. And our Engage to Earn IDO Launchpad aims to democratize crypto investment, which is also why we are doing these educational spaces. So if you are joining us for the first time today, welcome. We record this live on Twitter Spaces every Tuesday at 1 PM UTC, and, of course, you can always catch up with your favorite episodes on our Spotify channel. And then before we get on to today, I know we have listeners from all over the world.

So if you do find yourself in Singapore this weekend, I will be speaking at the Blockchain Festival Asia this weekend. So if you're attending the event, do stop and say hello. So on to today, I'm very excited. If you are a regular listener of the show, you'll know we've had, guests on the show before talking about NFT ticketing. But today, we're really doing a deep dive because we have an incredible panel of experts, all of which are going to be diving deep into this digital revolution that we're all part of, especially when it comes to NFT ticketing. Now NFT ticket ticketing is a sector that truly redefines what it means to attend events, what it means to engage with brands, what it means to be part of communities in the digital age. Of course, we all are used to how events work. We are all used to how ticketing works.

And today, we will be delving into what are the problems with ticketing as it stands right now and, really, what are the, the the benefits, not the hype, but the benefits that NFTs can bring to the ticketing ecosystem. So I have incredible panel of guests. I would not be able to do their bios justice, so I'm going to keep it very brief. We are first up joined by Divya Prashanth who is the CEO and cofounder of HQNFTs. HQNFTs is not just revolutionizing blockchain technology, but also prioritizing cultural diversity by spotlighting Indian artists through NFT proof of attendance and live performance support. Divya's work in transitioning traditional businesses through the blockchain through AI, IoT, and smart cities, coupled with her dedication to advancing blockchain adoption, makes her a leading voice in the sector. And I'm very excited to be hearing about all the, developments that that HQNFTs is doing also with government. Then next, we have Peter Hui , who is the co-founder of Moongate.

Now you might have heard of Moongate. It's a venture backed platform offering an end to end solution for NFT ticketing and memberships. Peter has a background in venture capital and in investment banking. So his journey to Moongate saw him pioneering early stage investments in web3 technology, and here we are today building his own product. Moongate's mission is to enhance customer engagement and loyalty for brands and events organizers worldwide to make it a key player in the NFT space. And then last but certainly not least, we have David Lane, CEO of SI Tickets by Sports Illustrated. David brings over 2 decades of executive leadership to our discussion. Under his guidance, SI Tickets, maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong.

Maybe it's SI Tickets, David, you'll tell me, has emerged as a fan first secondary ticketing marketplace. Very excited to be talking about this. Now the company boasts a vast inventory and a groundbreaking approach to combining traditional and NFT ticket solutions. David's extensive experience in driving growth in technology and entertainment offers valuable insights into the future of event ticketing. So without further ado, thank you guys so much for joining me up here today. Very, very excited to be talking about event ticketing. Now I am going to ask you to weave your own experience, into the various questions as opposed to as opposed to starting with a question about your experience. Typically, I dive right into the topic.

But I thought today, before we get to NFT ticketing itself, I wanna just zoom out a little bit and talk about more broad strokes, topics that certainly will touch on the specifics of today's discussion. So hosting the show, I mean, we're on season 3. We've seen a lot of talk about a lot of different use cases and utilities for NFTs. Some of them are very early, and we know we won't really see traction until maybe a decade down the line, and then others are far more immediate in terms of application. So I think because we are talking about NFT ticketing, events are already taking place, NFTs might be new to the game, but ticketing is something that people already do. So I wanna hear and and, Divya, maybe you can start with you. As we stand today, February 2024, NFTs have had a crazy wild roller coaster ride. Sometimes the media loves them.

Sometimes the media hates them. What do you see as the future of NFTs, generally speaking, broad strokes, as we said yesterday?

Great. Thank you for the question, Nadja. And on a on a very, very broad stroke, I think NFTs is what is going to make it real for people as to how we can use the blockchain, the actual sort of applications. Of course, you know, the and the Crypto Punks and the various other JPEGs have caught the imagination of people. But I think in terms of the actual real world, value that the blockchain brings in terms of, it being a DeFi or being a ticketing application or it being a token gated, IoT application or a very secure, you know, drugs, you know, a place that stores, very secure, medicines in, in NHS. All of this is going to happen through, NFTs is my sort of belief. Yeah.

So I wanna get back to why you believe that. But before we get there, David, what are your thoughts when you think about the concept of NFTs today? There's a lot of hype. There's a lot of overpromises, underdelivery. What do you see as the future of NFTs?

Well, we let me just give everyone 30 seconds on Sports Illustrated tickets to undersize understand the size and scale of where we are. Today, we have 2 and a half $1,000,000,000 of inventory and 50,000,000 tickets to events around the world. The live event ecosystem has been standardized. We all tap into exchanges. Those exchanges distribute tickets, and we can all see that when we're looking for sports concerts or theater tickets. Multiple marketplaces are literally selling the same tickets to the same events. And what differentiates is the brand, the price, and whether or not you are loyal to that existing ticket marketplace. When you think about how the live event global ecosystem is constructed, in order for us or StubHub or viagogo or Ticketmaster to be able to list an event for sale and transfer those tickets to a consumer and have that consumer enter the building, resell that ticket.

We all must be working across a similar ecosystem. Blockchain for ticketing creates an enormous amount of opportunity. The challenge as we see it when we are now a primary ticketing provider is that there can be no difference between what is a on chain event where NFT tickets are distributed and legacy tickets. Those events have to sit alongside of each other. The consumer has to have a similar experience. There cannot be any education. There's no need to stake. There's no need for a wallet.

Every one of every demographic needs to be able to purchase this ticket, walk in the door. The real opportunity is what that ticket can become as an NFT. And that's where we see as Sports Illustrated and reaching tens of millions of fans every month of doing something that enhances the guest experience. And so last year, we brought our primary ticketing solution on chain into the marketplace. Today with our partner Ava Labs and minting on Avalanche, we are leaning in aggressively. We are buying companies in the primary space, and we think that the mass adoption of NFT ticketing requires the blending from web3 into web2, and that's what the ecosystem we think everyone needs to be driving towards.

Wonderful. I'm very excited to be getting into these topics with you today. Peter, you have had a interesting background because you come from the VC space. You understand that aspect of the business, and now you are also building in the space. So tell me from your perspective, what is the tick what what is the future of NFTs, and, is there a future? Of course, we saw a lot of investment into NFTs in in 2021 and so on, and then it sharply dropped. So at this time, what is the future?

Absolutely, Quick intro. I'm Peter, cofounder of Moongate. So, yeah. I mean, I actually got into crypto, I think, back into 2017, but more on the personal, I guess, trading sort of things, and obviously went through the DeFi kind of summer, the NFT boom. And, obviously, we can see that at the beginning, a lot of the NFT investment is maybe a lot of the hype, a lot of the PFP, a lot of, you know, the community building. And, obviously, as you mentioned earlier on as well, all of them are also kind of, like, fading away already.

But I think since also then, since my team actually flipped a lot of NFTs back then, we also see a lot of real life utilities and also real applications with NFT, specifically on the ticketing membership space. Obviously, I think there are also other kind of strong use cases in other verticals. Maybe in game side, it can be kind of the, you know, in game assets. And then you can kinda bring this across games. It can be digital art. It can be steal all of the blue chip kind of, and a key projects building a community, building a real world advocate, do a real I guess, use cases. But for us, we do see that a lot of the usage is gonna be lying on top of the real life use cases, especially in the tech industry. And extending that, we do think that, we're nowhere at a key is actually apart from the trading piece, you know, that was mentioned earlier on.

I think apart, you know, the engagement piece and also kind of building a community and then really extending the customer journey is also kind of really how NFT can able to add add value to all the end users and also the event organizers as well. So we see that traditionally a lot of the tickets, you know, we just you know, it's kind of like a boring process. You just buy the tickets and then, pretty much that's it. There are a lot of engagement, and, also, you really can't be able to kind of locate your core events or really kind of build continuous long term community with kind of the people that attend your events. And I think for us, you know, we're bringing tickets on chain apart from, you know, other benefits like, you know, the liquidity, the trading, but more importantly, I think, extending the customer journey, increasing engagement, building the community, and really bring a lot of the exclusive experience and bringing kind of the NFTs across, also other network and ecosystem and, you know, the DApps across different chains, be it maybe folding, be it maybe kind of tooling gated content. You know, I think there are a lot of possibilities that can, you know, that can have in the future with kind of, I guess, ticket spring on chain. And I think just wanna kind of quickly last on is we do agree a lot on kind of the seamless, experience, whereas so we actually focus a lot on having a very, very same experience for users when they buy the tickets right now using our product. You know, obviously, they can log in using wallets, but they can also kind of use maybe social to log in.

They can pay with credit card. They can pay with crypto. But ultimately speaking, it is basically as seamless as kind of buying a ticket on any other ticketing platform, but then the tickets are already on chain. So far, we have Empire, like, hundreds of events globally. We have over, like, a 100, a 1000 of users. And, basically, some of them, the feedback is gonna be you know, they don't even know that they are buying, like, NFT tickets. I think that's also our ultimate goal and also, rethink that in the long run, people, you know, the NFT would just be the tech and then kind of open up a lot of possibilities. And, basically, just something that, you know, in the term ticketing, just buying as simple as, like, a ticketing experience right now.

But, happy to share more on kind of, you know, how all these can come together, from our point of view.

Thanks, Peter. I love that, you know, you touched on how seamless and and, as David said as well, how invisible the process ultimately needs to become in order for web3 to be realized. We shouldn't be focusing on the fact that it's web3. I mean, if we do something on the Internet, we don't sell the fact that it's on the Internet. It's on the Internet because we are all on the Internet. So I want to know then, we understand that there's an opportunity here, but not everyone listening to this might be as familiar with why that opportunity even exists. Now we have different people, different, let's say, stakeholders in the situation. We have the people selling the tickets, so the event organizers.

We have the event ticketing platforms themselves, audience members wanting to attend those events, and the ticket is what stands in their way. So I want to understand, if I am, you know, the average person, I'm just wanting to buy a ticket, let's say, I don't know, to see Beyonce in concert, What are the problems that I maybe, you know at the vendor level, there are issues, but at the audience level, what are the issues that I, as a average user, would face with tickets, legacy tickets, that would be solved with NFTs and putting event tickets on chain? David, can we start with you?

Sure, Nadja. So there's very little challenges. There are tens of millions of people that go through 100 of thousands of events every single year. I talk about this all the time. There is nothing more useless to us as a fan or a guest at an event than a barcode. The barcode not only creates anxiety, but it's in our trash bin the moment that we scan in and walk in the door. Yet this is the entry point. This is the way we are walking into what's supposed to be a 3 hour long experience that we're gonna tell for the rest of our lives.

That bar code on chain as an NFT, to your question, improves the fan, the guest experience. It creates the ability for something that was literally discarded to have value. Videos, pictures, rewards, loyalties, offers, updates, memorabilia, commemoratives. When you can change something that every single person that entered that event has to hold and and today just discards into something that has real meaningful value. And it could just be a passing, you know, 60 second clip from the show. It could be a thank you message from the band. It could be a sponsor to go up to Concourse C and get a food and beverage offer. But when we look at the there are no challenges in the ticket industry.

There are improvements that can be made. But the legacy infrastructure that's out there and what we are all so accustomed to and the scanners at the gates and the process to get in and how they resolve issues is well baked. The industry doesn't face uphill challenges. What it needs is a way for the event or the artist or the team or the athlete to improve their fans' experience, make it worth them to pay the price that they did, drive down, get on the subway, go to this event, spend their money, have a great time. They need to improve that experience, and that's exactly what NFT tickets can do.

Wow. Love that. So, Divya, from your perspective then, because you work with quite a, let's say, say, niche audience in the sense that you work with Indian artists, in order to get their work out there. How are you finding that people are really just wrapping their head around what this technology is and what it can do in the ticketing space? If, as David says, it's going to vastly improve the experience, have you had experience with people being onboarded into using NFTs for ticketing? And what is the what is the sentiment? What is the uptake? What is the experience?

Great. Fantastic question. So just to give you a little more, you know, perspective into what we do, we are actually in our, blockchain infrastructure company. So we do more than, the Indian artists. We also do ticketing for train tickets, and we also do token gated access into real world properties. So you can see all of these have this common thread of access, you know, access and also in terms of token gating. And all of this is only possible if you make it simple and seamless, very much like what we have initially discussed. If you're going to ask people to remember seed phrases, if you're gonna ask them to say you've gotta store away this, and, you know, every time you log into something you've got to have these phrases, it's gonna be impossible.

So that's the first thing we kind of figured at the very beginning. Either the artist or the, organization or the customer has no interest in any of this. It's like the database in the back end. I really don't care if it's a, you know, Oracle database or a MySQL database or whichever it may be. I'm just gonna use the the front end, and that's exactly what we have noticed that we just need to kind of completely abstract the back end. And, that's what is going to separate the winners from the losers. We have to subtract the back end completely. No amount of, learning education will be helpful if you do not make that transition at this point where people are not going straight to web3 but actually in that sort of transitional mode of 2.5.

And, again, while we as, you know, these, companies that are responsible for upkeeping of this sort of token gated communities, either be it ticketing on train tickets or, or proof of attendance that we create sometimes. What we do is we make it possible for the underlying sort of, web3 nuances to be very safely secured on the on chain using very, very, secure hardware. And that's something we have to completely take owners and be responsible for. And I guess those are the small sort of, not, sort of details, but we those those sort of details have to be considered at every point, for the benefit of of, the peace of mind for companies like ourselves, at the same time for the secure and safe, keeping of information of both clients and, customers.

Yeah. I absolutely love what you said that no amount of education is going to make it possible for people to get to the point where they're able to understand these seed phrases. It simply shouldn't be there. So, Peter, I wanna know then, what are your guys' experience, in terms of onboarding people, whether these are, you know, fans, guests, buying tickets, or on the other side, event organizers. How are people responding to this idea that, yes, tickets have existed for pretty much forever, but now there's this new way of doing ticketing that's going to greatly enhance the experience, on either end. How have you been finding the uptake?

Yep. Absolutely. I think right now, when we speak with a lot of the event organizers, a lot of the users, you know, they might heard of NFT ticketing. They might heard of other company maybe pitching them on using their product. But I think one of the key gaps in the market, especially all the NFT ticketing product out there, As I said, they focus a lot on kind of just the on chain experience. Maybe people have demands. They have to log in using wallets, but, really, a lot of the basic ticketing function are not supported by those kind of product. I think for us, we do understand and know that and kind of also understand that all these event organizers, they would need something, obviously, very kind of innovative, but at the same time, also something that is fundamentally able to kind of solve the existing use cases, They just, you know, very basic, maybe, like, kind of distributing, take us through this kind of code, seeing kind of some of the high level data or whatnot.

For us, we, I guess, kind of built, with this mindset, whereas we have all the fundamental kind of features that will be needed for event organizers and users to buy tickets without any hassle, but at the same time, adding a lot of the key reference elements into the product such that they will be able to kind of enjoy the benefits for having, you know, tickets on chain. And, obviously, I think the 2 other kind of panelists mentioned about kind of the key benefits of having tickets on chain, be it obviously, like, collectibles, especially with a lot of, I guess, the new NFT or kind of token standard. It can be, like, dynamic NFT, maybe, you know, things that they do within the stadium or whatnot. The NFTs can be upgraded. It can be, certain kind of key moments during the show, you know, with kind of a more dynamic, kind of, images as the tickets. It's just opened up a lot of opportunities, and even a lot of the very basic use case that a lot of our partners, they design a very, very cool GIF for their, kind of tickets. People would just basically kind of retreat kind of tickets just because of, you know, how cool it is. But I think that's really kind of just, you know, one of the base use case, but I think it actually opens up a lot more on the engagement and, you know, post event engagement, community building side of it when it comes to, token gated contents, don't wanna get a community, which, obviously, our product kinda support this as well.

But I think more importantly is actually building our on chain profile for these people. And I think using maybe Beyonce kind of concert as example, one example could be, like, you know, this maybe a certain person right now. It's been to the Beyonce concert about a lot of times, actually, the singers or the artists are not able to identify who these people are. So even though maybe I went to Beyonce concert for, like, 10 years straight, she wouldn't know, and even I wouldn't be able to kind of, you know, access to some of their, her kind of exclusive events or whatnot. But because of blockchain, because of putting tickets on chain, all your, I guess, activities are kind of putting on the blockchain in an open ecosystem and open database per se. I think it opens up a lot of opportunities. Maybe right now in Spotify, if there's, like, a new song releasing, the artist can actually just, you know, offer this playlist to the core fans, identified by those who have been to their concerts for the past few years. And it can be identified through blockchain, through their on chain tickets, and they don't have to do any kind of system integration, data integration, or whatnot, which are obviously super, super hard and nearly impossible right now in the web2 space.

So I do see that, you know, not really just us as putting tickets on chain, maybe other kind of apps in the space, putting kind of music on chain, album on chain, or even sports event putting on chain. Like, all of things putting on chain, actually building a very full all around the kind of on chain identities for people and also allow even organizers, authors to just kind of find out their core events to engage them. And at the same time, it's gonna be very beneficial on both ends. I think, lastly, even on kind of the liquidity marketplace, obviously, that's gonna be something that's super important in the long run, but we think that right now, probably the primary tickets, is something that we focus a lot on right now, just trying to put more tickets on chain, trying to kind of educate more people to put this. And, ultimately, also, I guess, a very natural benefit is gonna be, you know, reducing the fake tickets for users. I think these are also, obviously, for, I guess, more well known or easier understood kind of concept for all of your general public as well.

Thanks, Peter. You touched on many different things that I wanna hopefully have some time to get into. But I think the big thing that came up for me as you spoke was this concept of ticketing and digital identity maybe blending at some point. The example you gave, I've been a Beyonce fan for 10 years. I've gone to all of her concerts, and yet she has no idea who I am unless I get into some maybe exclusive, you know, top fan program. But, otherwise, my identity as a Beyonce fan might be completely, anonymous to the person, of course, that I'm a fan of. Whereas if these things do get on chain, there might be a more bidirectional link. But, David, then I want to know because a lot of what we've been talking about reminds me of, the old Myspace pages.

You know, it was, like, kind of before Facebook where you had your page and you made the page yours and you had music playing and cool little quotes and photos and videos and whatnot. And every person sort of, let's say, Myspace profile represented who they are in a way that I think social media today cannot really do because the platform itself, the the templates, the designs already set up. So can you imagine a future where, through NFT ticketing specifically, that we can again, let's say, get to that sort of the the new iteration of Myspace where just through the events that I've attended, that you might be able to visit a profile that I have, and you'll be able to see, like, all of the events? Or how do you imagine, the digital identity aspect playing out, in future in terms of ticketing?

I really look at this is a personal decision. You know, we are all able to either create and make ourselves known publicly, a profile that has our likes, who we are, where we are, characteristics, what our favorite artists are, what our favorite teams are. Web3, for all of its I mean, it the benefits that Web3 is bringing and this community is bringing to all of these marketplaces around the world is two sided. There is a public profile, but anonymity and a wallet ID isn't going to give an artist first last email. And so when you think about the tools and, you know, as and, obviously, you were talking about whether it's a MySpace page or whether it's a page that I can communicate out to everyone in my community, my network, who I want to see, that these are the things that I like. These are the places that I like to go. You know, we can do that today. What the benefit of an on chain experience and leveraging an NFT ticket can do for an RFP.

Beyonce is a head shiny object headline, global superstar. She is not going to convince Ticketmaster to change 70,000 seats at MetLife Stadium into NFT tickets. That is not where our focus is. What she needs, what her team wants is the last speaker was just referring to. Who came? Who's here? Who are the fans that showed up, paid $300 to see my show for 3 hours? She doesn't get that information, and she's not going to under the current legacy infrastructure. Even if you switch everything over to NFTs, she's not gonna get the first, last, and email of it. What the way for fans to join and be a part of an artist or a team community doesn't come through the ticketing experience. It comes through all of the other tools that they make available, their fan clubs, their VIP list, their radio stations, their online streaming podcasts that talk and that they do interviews and that you join and you become part of this community.

The way that we look at the marketplace today you know, look, you can come on to our site at sitickets.com, and you can get Beyonce concert tickets. You can get country music. You can go to an NBA game. You can go to a show in Singapore. You know, we have events around the world. The NFT ticketed events that are on the site right now that we manage and that we support, you can't tell the difference. It's right next to the Beyonce concert. It looks like the same exact type of event.

The ticket looks exactly the same. The experience looks exactly the same. But to build the community and for all of us as consumers to join others that also love that team and also love that artist, the ticket is not gonna be the gateway into it. The ticket, the NFT ticket is gonna be another tool that they now have that the event or the team or the artist or the rights holder has to help add into their assets so that they can create a bigger community, a bigger audience, and and allow people to discover each other. I think the the biggest challenge that we all face in the web3 community in trying to create a mass adoption use case is that we have to learn from the lessons of the past. And I do you know, MySpace, great example, no longer exists. You have to look at where we are today, and what does the artist or the team or the venue or all of us wanna do? We all wanna find each other and have this bond, this connection, because we're all going to this show. We're all going to watch this team.

Those tools, there's a 100 of them out there. This will be another tool. This will be another opportunity in one of a 100 that we will help bring to the marketplace, but it has to look and feel and and behave just like the others so that there is no learning, there is no barriers, there is no education or tutorials or stay or any of the of the blockers that we're facing today. I just think we're sitting on the precipice at this point of this truly accelerating, and we're seeing it. We're seeing it today. We have partners around the world that are deploying NFT tickets right alongside of legacy tickets. Look, feel the same.

They buy the same. You can't tell the difference, but they're starting to see the benefits, and we're starting to see it accelerate.

Wow. If only I could just, copy paste the same message that every guest gives, and just put that into the web3 industry so we can all once and for all understand that we are not going to reach mass adoption tomorrow, but we are building the future on the way there. And it's so incredibly exciting to be along for that journey because I think if you wait until everything hits the mainstream media, it will come as a surprise. But if you see these things being built over the years and how they evolve, it really is just the next natural step. David, thank you so much for that. Divya, I want to know then because David has very clearly highlighted the fact that, you know, if we want NFTs to be adopted as a technology, we have to stop focusing on how sexy NFTs are. Oh, NFTs this and NFTs that and and the hype and the lingo is really something that holds us back from this elusive mass adoption. But, of course, with HQNFTs also being involved with train ticketing, you are very much, aware of and used to operating in a world where NFTs are not necessarily, you know, the golden new hyped, trend that everyone's hopping on, but a real world utility.

So can you talk us through your experience in this realm of adoption as well, of course, working with governments, which is very much not the same as working with, users, who might want to try out the coolest new thing?

Great. Thank you so much, for the question. I want to answer this in 2 parts. 1st, generally, I mean, every time we talk about NFT ticketing, it gets gets me super excited, especially with the events and such because the possibility for NFTs within the ticketing space within just events is unfathomable. Right? You can have this whole concept of this audience management that comes into play where depending on the type of ticket you have, the different experiences that open up for you can be kind of completely different. So you have this sort of nice token gating mechanism where if you're a VIP, you're in general admission, you're a speaker, you are an attendee, you are a sponsor, you could have different experience at OpenUp. So for me, that was the starting point. To be fair, that's really where I started.

That's where my sort of interest in NFTs actually began. Then now to come to this really sort of amazing, you know, ticketing experience that we are right now going through with, building train tickets on the blockchain. So just to put this into perspective, just let alone just only in the UK, about 240,000,000 is lost, due to train and railcard fraud. And there are simple sort of excuses like, oh, I didn't scan my ticket at the gates or something like that comes up. So what we are actually building now is, tickets on the blockchain, of course, which comes with all the classic, value ads like immutable, cannot be changed, and, can be, you know, real time data. But what also comes with any content being on the chain is that you can always validate. You know, it's a classic sort of highest level of anti fraud mechanism where you can just do a validation on the chain to see if the ticket is valid for the journey or not. You know? And along with this, we use various other elements like, GPS and, a lot of IoT devices to kind of talk to each other to make this, happen wherein we are validating the ticket not by just by using your start and end journey in terms of the location.

We also use the blockchain's cryptography that is a classic sort of, technique, of signatures to be able to validate if that journey is valid and if that ticket for that particular journey is valid as well. And this involves a lot of, you know, talking to various different third parties, not just the blockchain. There's a lot of elements involved. It's a bit, it's slightly more complex because we have about 4 or 5 parties that need to be involved in this entire sort of, process. But then the beauty is the underlying tech, which we first started off, was for ticketing. But now it's kind of enhanced and transformed into something, you know, way bigger and really exciting. We are actually building the world's 1st train tickets on the blockchain as we speak, and that's a very, very exciting place to be. And, yes.

But, definitely, the underlying sort of idea is all about token gating, anti fraud mechanisms. So if I start my journey now and I end my journey in 2 hours' time, I, as an individual, can combat fraud by simply validating my own ticket. So I don't have an excuse to say that my ticket is not valid. You know? So and I don't have an excuse to say at the gate I did not check my ticket. You know? So these are the sort of small, changes in behavior that we are making in within, how do you people use the app or how they use our technology or how they interface our technology to kind of make an impact on the, the revenue, the covers of, you know, the, the revenue system in the UK.

Wow. The world's first train tickets on the blockchain. That is very exciting and, definitely something that we have to look forward to perhaps. I don't know how many years it's going to take before all our train tickets can be on the blockchain, but, fun times. Then you don't need to save the ticket stubs for your scrapbook anymore. Peter, so we've been talking about a lot of the benefits, and what these would bring in terms of the user experience. But I wanna know, as of now, what are the types of events that you see the most adoption for in terms of NFT ticketing? Is there a pattern? Is there a trend that it's perhaps more these type of events or more this type of audience? What does that look like for you at the moment?

Yep. Absolutely. I think in our opinion, you know, actually bringing this product NFT ticketing product to crypto conferences and events are actually the easiest way to start, and, also, that's how we started, actually, since 2 years ago. I think so far, we have, like, hundreds of, you now, Web3 events and conferences globally, and all of the bigger or kind of, I guess, prominent regional crypto blockchain conferences are also using us to issue tickets. And I think, obviously, you know, it's the ease and also able to kind of leverage the full extent of NFT ticketing, mainly because they kind of also understand what's kind of the potential of it and also what it does for the audience. So one example is that, maybe we're working with non budgetable conference in Europe right now, and they would actually leverage our NFT data, ticket here, whereas they would offer, you know, maybe a blue chip anarchy's holders, discounted tickets automatically, using our platform that, obviously, out of the traditional ticket taking platform wouldn't be able to support. But at the same time, able to kind of, kind of leverage our fundamental kind of ticketing platform on distributing tickets to all their users. So I think, it actually helps us to modify and iterate our product and really understand what people would need, especially in the crypto added benefits, per se.

So another example would be, I guess, maybe we work with the blockchain week in, Taiwan end of last year. So they actually used the token gated benefits as well, whereas for ticket holders who bought the tickets on our platform, now you can also enjoy, you know, FNB discount, all that discount, all of the online, offline kind of discount and perks and benefits, gated by the NFT holdings, or which aka kind of the biggest holding. And, you know, all of these kind of, successful kind of case studies, use case, not only help us to really, modify our product, but also to bring a real life use case and and showcase what blockchain entities can actually do. And I think this naturally helps us to kind of build our very strong use case, and right now we are expanding, obviously, outside or beyond kind of the crypto conferences. And, you know, we think that, you know, music festivals, concerts, you know, entertainment, and obviously kind of sports events are gonna be, the biggest or kind of the key use cases for ticketing, on chain. And with this kind of, I guess, successful kind of track record of kind of our product able to kind of surface, you know, hundreds of kind of users' actual tech is putting on chain, it actually helps us to kind of showcase to all these partners on not only, you know, the product as a very mature, but also what kind of additional benefits can be, like, a showcase or used, with all these kind of blockchain element. Because frankly speaking, as you probably know, you know, all these, I guess, traditional players, they wouldn't care about whether tickets is actually a blockchain platform or not, but it really just care about what kind of additional benefits, additional functions, and what kind of actual value bring into kind of the event organizers and kind of the end users. So, you know, recently, we work with maybe, like, on music festivals, we work with, Wonder Fruit Riches, one of the biggest kind of music festivals in Thailand to kind of bring kind of ticketing on chain and also digital collectibles with the attendees.

And it's actually a very, very successful use cases. A lot you know, basically, there were, like, 40% conversion in terms of, you know, people claiming digital collectibles. We actually use tickets to be kind of, like, an active experience for kind of their VIPs, and there will be more partnerships coming up this year. You know, not only just music festivals, but also, maybe on, like, cultural events. We're working with, ComplexCon, which is a kind of, like, a cultural, IP in the US, and they're organizing an event in Hong Kong actually next month. And we also kind of working with them just adding more kind of digital collectibles kind of people who bought the tickets actually on our platform and, you know, connecting with other kind of web3 applications. But for instance, for these kind of energy holders, they would be eligible for additional things on kind of favor, which is, kind of the social web3 kind of apps as well. So really kind of bringing all these kind of entities not only just within our platform, but across the different apps across the web3 ecosystem, which we think is gonna be the automation or really kind of demonstrate the use case.

And first weekend, we have a lot of, I guess, more web2 kind of traditional use cases in kind of the music industry, the culture industry, the sports industry as well. But I think, for instance, we can to start off with, we do think web3 conference is gonna be probably the easiest person to adopt this given they actually understand the potentials, their nest, and able to kind of fully leverage the functions and actually kind of building a strong case study to kind of, I guess, bring this to the mass public together.

Thank you, Peter, for that very comprehensive overview of some of the adoption that we are seeing in the in the industry. It's very interesting because, I attend a lot of web3 events all around the world, and it always strikes me the absence of NFT ticketing. You would think that at an industry conference, that would be the place for these things to be tested, and, I can really count almost on one hand how many times I've been to an event where that was even an option. And even if it was an option, it was still really difficult to sign up. So it's interesting to see how this is then playing out in web3. And then, David, I wanna know from you because one of the, I think, key use cases for NFT tickets, for NFT collectibles has been in the sports industry. Now if we look at the adoption, not only of NFTs, but of a lot of web3 technologies, You will see a lot of companies building the solutions, but you would not really see a lot of, let's say, web3 natives necessarily using the technology on a daily basis. However, when it comes to sports, I mean, we have entire group of very loyal fans, people who are just live and breathe the sport and their players.

How do you think, in terms of adoption, what is happening in Web3 that even Web3 itself is not really adopting its own technology, but then you have a very strong use case like sport where it's even easier to sell the technology that people perhaps don't know what it is. But so what is the difference there? What is going on?

I like many of the use cases, there are look. Fans are emotional, passionate, inebriated. They love their teams. They love the players. They show up, you know, a concert and the audience for that 3 hours, and then, you know, a year later, maybe seeing that artist on tour, not for a sports fan. A sports fan has a daily, weekly opportunity to engage and see and experience and, you know, have the moment where they are excited or as disappointed in the outcome. So when you look at the use cases of what has so far happened in the category, in sports category, it has done well. There's been great examples of how the web3 community has raced in, seen some of these drops, some of these collections, taken advantage of it, gotten access, have a piece of real because sports as a category, memorabilia is in its foundation.

So offering NFTs as a part of that commemorative memorabilia segment is a natural fit. It belongs. It makes sense. But it's also very limited. And the amount of fans that own a baseball card or a pair of signed sneakers or an autograph ball is is a very limited audience. It is at a 70,000 people at a stadium watching a game. Jersey, hats, physical materials versus a digital collectible is gonna have an a a limited audience to it. But like I talked about earlier, it's an important part of the overall offering because you can't you don't know what your fan wants, and you don't know what they're going to get excited about.

And that's why you see teams and athletes and around the world doing so many different things. So for sports and the commemorative collectible category and how NFTs fit into it, it it belongs. It needs to continue. It needs to expand, but it also needs to create this so every person can own and be able to appreciate what they just bought. And that's challenging when you can't mount that on your wall. You can't wear it around your neck. You know, you can't put it on your head and walk around the streets. And so pairing it, physical.

You know, we talk about the digital and the physical pairing of commemorative or jerseys or merch or access. If you buy this, you get to come in, you know, 2 hours before, meet the player, meet the team, do a photo op. That's the great use case here. But it goes to my original point, which as a stand alone, you're you've got such huge opportunity. But when you bring web2 and web3 and the physical and the digital together, this is the mass adoption. This is how you onboard someone into the community for the first time. This is how somebody gets their first NFT because they were buying or getting or accessing something that they were familiar with. And that's the strategy that we believe, as Sports Illustrated, is where we're gonna get the most amount of people into the community the fastest, not not just leaning in with a web3 opportunity, but combining it, bringing it together with a ticket and a digital, with a merch and a digital, with a offer for an experience with the athlete or a picture or some type of post event party or get whatever it might be, but pairing it together.

And that's where we think the real opportunity is.

Well, well, I think we have a very interesting years, very interesting few years up ahead, as we see these things being increasingly adopted. And when I say these things, I don't only refer to NFT ticketing, but really this basket of things that we talk about in the web3 space. So, Divya, I'm going to ask the final question before we get into the actual questions because I see there's some really interesting questions from the audience. My final question then would be and, of course, I am putting you on the spot here, not expecting you to have an answer that is correct in your little crystal ball. But when it comes to seeing NFT ticketing in everyday life, I mean, you are working, as you said, with tickets, for the railway, so that's for the metro. So that's something that is very specific and clearly as far into the future in terms of mass adoption. But when do you think that the average person attending an event or buying a ticket of some sort, by when can we expect that the average person might come across 1 every now and then as opposed to now where most people might have never heard of it or had any experience with it?

That's a fantastic question to kind of, you know, close this in many ways. So for me, personally, it's got to be what is in it for you? So that is what is in it for you as a customer, as a provider of the service? What is the return on investment? In our in like, look at the railways. In the railways, it's a clear 240,000,000 is lost in revenue due to train and railway fraud. To combat that, they're using NFT ticketing, but then that's great for the train operator. Now look at it. What is in it for the customer? For the customer, it's got to be a simple, easy user experience. You cannot it's like this. I it's like Oracle saying, oh, you're using, you know, Oracle database or, Microsoft saying it's in a Microsoft database.

No. For the customer, it doesn't matter. He just wants a simple or he or she just wants a simple, easy user experience. That's it. A simple, seamless experience where I'm gonna buy my ticket to get on this train. So, okay, what else do I get along with it? Am I getting some loyalty programs which I can use? Loyalty coins, points that I can use when I'm traveling from one, place to the other. Let's say I've I'm traveling to 300 miles every every month. Can I take those 300 miles and convert them into loyalty points that I can use, to buy my cup of tea coffee when I go when I take that journey? That could be one in that that that could be something that could be interesting for the, the customer, the the passenger.

Or it could be that, can I buy my favorite, tickets to my favorite game using those loyalty programs? So then, again, this then we are tying this ticketing system into another ticketing system, you know, which is, again, could be an NFT based ticketing system. So as you can see, the beauty of this of NFTs is that it's all about how easily we can, what do you say, transfer data or keep that data that is immutable on the blockchain accessible to everybody so we can talk to each other. So my NFT ticketing system on for train tickets can talk to, say, Sports Illustrated, ticketing system, which is very specifically for fan engagement and for, other such events. Right? So the beauty is these decentralized systems being able to talk to each other seamlessly, trustlessly as they're supposed to be doing, and customers able to get these experiences without having to know a thing about NFT. The word NFT is never gonna be mentioned, and then they're just getting their experience. And the train operator or the, the club being able to see these, their return on investment or a complete shift where they're getting revenue, which was completely a loss leader previously. These sort of changes in at every level and how it impacts each of these stakeholders, that needs to change. And when we when that happens, then NFT will not be even known as a thing, but it'll just be mass adoption.

Greatly. And thank you, Divya. So I'm going into the questions. David, I'm gonna start with you from from Lawrence. How do you handle having a ticket NFT in your wallet, and then you set up another wallet on your friend's phone and he will also have the ticket? So now you have say 2 people with the same ticket.

Yes. So remembering how the world's ticket ecosystem is constructed today. When you buy a ticket, no matter who you buy it from, you're gonna get an email from the ticket primary solution at the venue. So in just to give you a real world example, you go buy a ticket on viagogo, you get an email from Ticketmaster. You buy a ticket from StubHub, you get an email from Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster in that use is the primary. They are controlling the venue. It is their ecosystem that manages the event.

It is their hardware that scans in. Sports Illustrated Tickets has a secondary market. We have 50,000,000 tickets to events around the world. Everything from the Olympics to an off theater show. That's a secondary market. We also manage events and venues that we are the ticket provider. It is our hardware that scans in. It is our ecosystem that the consumer goes through to walk in the door.

In the world today, when you buy a ticket, you don't transfer that ticket from the primary. Ticketmaster doesn't let you take the ticket out of Ticketmaster and bring it into a third party ecosystem. You can transfer it to another person. You can send it to a friend. You can sell it. You can transfer it. But that person now needs to go back into Ticketmaster to access that ticket. When we look at the use case of NFT tickets and how the community expects an NFT to behave, we're all thinking, yes.

We bought it here, and we're gonna transfer it out. And then from a validity and security standpoint, I'm going to need to provide proof that this ticket is in my wallet when I walk in the door, and they're going to validate that I have the ticket that can get me in the door by me connecting my wallet, and that's the protocol for when we walk in on NFT tickets. But that's exactly my point earlier. That is not how the global event ecosystem works. The global event ecosystem is a custodial wallet. Ticketmaster, in this use case, is the custodial wallet. You don't transfer the ticket out. They hold the ticket.

You can access it. You can show it on your phone. You can transfer it to another person, but they are the custodian, and they don't let you transfer it out. In our ecosystem, we do let you transfer the ticket out. So if you buy a ticket, an NFT ticket on an event that we are powering, you can transfer that to your wallet. You can then transfer it to another person's wallet. But just like in the regular world, Bolivian Security, when you walk up to the gate, we have to verify that you are the owner of that ticket. That use case, just to to on everybody on this on this spaces, just remember that in all of our lives, there has never been a point where you were able to transfer a ticket from the primary into another device or a separate ecosystem.

That's what the NFT capability allows us to do, but that is not the way that events need to operate. We need to standardize across what the world does today and create a similar functional use case, functional experience. Custodial wallet, ticket remains there. Everything moves through the primary ticketing provider. That's how the ecosystem is set today, and until mass adoption takes place, that's how it's gonna operate going forward.

So I just wanna quickly kind of chime in. I think for us, you know, agree that kind of verifying kind of the tickets has to be very seamless. And actually, the way that we approach this is gonna be, able to kind of check the ticket real time, on chain by just getting a QR code, a dynamic QR code to kind of prevent, kind of double usage or whatnot. But, I think, there I I think in the long run, there would also be kind of, I guess, like, an infrastructure for everyone to just kind of check any key ownerships even though if I could just send a ticket to someone else, they would still be able to kind of, you know, use that ticket to go into the event in a very decentralized way, the platform version. And then for us, we actually start off with building one of the key element would be kind of checking the NFT ownership real time on chain by a very, very seamless experience, maybe scanning a barcode, scanning a QR code. And that's something right now we are, I guess, approaching this, problem as well. And, yeah, I think we actually I think this is all, I guess, very crucial, in the long run. And as David mentioned, really not able to kind of really just keep the process the same, but kinda put the underlying infra on chain, and interacting with the chain.

I think that's gonna be, I guess, one of the key way forward as well.

Thank you, Peter. Divya, David do you want to add anything to these answers?

Yeah. Absolutely. So see a case where, you know, you have my seed phrase and I have your seed phrase and both of us are able to open the same wallet, and then we both end up at the, queue, and we, you know, we're standing next to each other. So this is your use case, right, where I have I mean, both of us have the same ticket, and we have, basically, both of us have the same wallet. We're 2 friends and we have both the same wallet. But at the end of the day, when you go to the gate, you have to scan. So when you scan, there will be enough mechanism built into these ticketing systems where, as soon as it scans, if it's a dynamic NFT, the NFT on the blockchain will be updated to say the ticket has been scanned. So the next person who's next to, who who's with you, your your friend, when he tries to scan at the gate, he won't be able to because all did that ticket has been expired because the, the chain has already, validated that, entry and knows that the individual has just used the ticket.

Right? So this is the a classic use case for NFTs where it's impossible to tamper with a blockchain NFT.

Perfect. Thank you all so much for your time today and for all the insights. I wish we had more time to at least go through some more of the questions, but we'll definitely, have you guys back on at various points, I think, throughout the future evolution of this technology as it unfolds. For those in the audience or listeners on the show, on the podcast afterwards, they would like to follow you and your work, where can they find you?

So, I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn or on, Twitter. It's the company's at HQNFTs. But I'm very, very accessible on, LinkedIn, so do reach out. Thank you.

And this is David. For anybody that wants to connect, with me on LinkedIn, David Lane, on Twitter, David Lane, and just also for the group that's out there. We are constantly looking for strategic opportunities, strategic investors, strategic partners. As Sports Illustrated, we have a massive global opportunity. We are not going to be able to take advantage of everything ourselves. And so we are trying to build quickly an ecosystem and a partner ecosystem along with investors that understand where the real opportunity is in web3. So please reach out.

And, yeah, and then for me, feel free to reach me on, like, LinkedIn, on Twitter, or, like, Telegram. Very accessible on all these. And, yeah, I'd love to connect with the rest of the panel after the call as well. So, yeah, pleasure to be here, and thanks for the time.

Thank you all so much. I think that whoever is thinking about NFT ticketing have new things to think about. And if it's not something that they've thought of before, you've certainly given them a lot of food for thought. And then just thank you for showing up and building every day. I think at the end of the day, as really was encapsulated so well throughout the course of this hour, is there are so many possible futures out there, but, ultimately, the only futures that we can become possibility is the ones that we are actively building. So, David, Peter, Divya, thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing you guys go from strength to strength in everything that you are building, and, we'll be following along. To the audience, thank you so much for joining another well, joining in on another hour of the Future of NFTs.

You Can almost imagine that it's not possible for you to have been here for an hour and not learned at least one new thing, which is why we are so privileged to be able to speak to such incredible minds on a every on a weekly basis. So until next week when I see you again for another episode. Have a good week, guys. Cheers.