The technology used to prevent the abusive resale of tickets for concerts or sporting events has opened a new business path. In addition, the government is preparing legislative measures to stop this practice. According to data from Verified market research, Resell the resulting tickets … 1,817 million euros in Europe last year. Projections for 2030 reach 7,769 million.
The startup Rebel Tickets is dedicated to “fan-to-fan” sales, a secure resale service for event tickets, where fans buy and sell tickets directly to each other through approved platforms. The company partners with promoters, venues and ticket companies with the aim of avoiding fraud and ensuring that every ticket resold is 100% valid. Recently they have concluded direct agreements with artists.
Its founder and CEO, Asier Bengoa, points out that the goal is to “give fans a safe space to be able to get rid of those tickets that they won’t use and also make the acquisition process easier for those who haven’t been able to buy mainly due to tickets being sold out.”
The technological platform, in cooperation with the event organizer, regulated by limits on prices and tickets offered to the same person, provides solutions against the practices of intermediaries and professional sellers. “We’re fighting professional resale, which doesn’t offer any kind of value,” Bengoa says.
He points out that “the traceability is complete through an application programming interface (API) connection with the ticket holder, to know which ticket is being uploaded, by whom, and whether it can be resold or not, with their respective price limits.”
There is no particular pedagogy, according to the Rebel Tickets CEO: “The ethical secondary market is a lot of technology, but it’s also marketing. The user must be convinced that reselling is not always a boring, unsafe and deceptive space. Educating them about these types of alternatives.
On the floor
Last Monday, the Plaza de Callao (Madrid) was the stage for a show of what will be the final edition of Boombastic, an urban music festival that will feature a lineup including artists such as María Becerra, Chanel, Hijos de la Ruina and Pole. YSY A, Luck Ra, Juan Magán, Kidd Keo, Ramma and Íñigo Quintero. The Asturian town of Llanera will host a meeting attracting more than 60,000 participants daily.
Various legislative initiatives are being taken in Europe to put an end to these practices
The festival has admission for ticket purchases and Rebel Tickets services for official secondary sales. Alba Pion Vazquez, Head of Ticketing at the Bombastic Festival, explains that since the birth of this show, they have fought against resale and organized the official secondary sale: “Thanks to Rebel Tickets, we give the possibility to change the ticket. Enterticket cancels the first QR and only the new ticket issued remains valid.
He adds: “In this process, the name must be changed, because it is mandatory for entry, and all of this is under our supervision and control.”
Ticket fraud is another factor in the business. “It’s a pest. “When you find at access control people with tickets that are useless or that have been sold out 20 times, it’s a bad time.”
Legislative changes
The Sustainable Consumption Bill wants to prevent resale from increasing the ticket price beyond the difference in the Consumer Price Index from the initial purchase to the next sale. In addition to blocking the website where the violation was committed, the law stipulates penalties. “This change supports our vision. We already have price limits for all events and we try to adjust them more and more every time. “The law directly supports the type of operations that a company like Rebel Tickets does,” Bengoa says.
But he warns that partial legislation could be counterproductive: “An incomplete law will not eliminate resale, but will push it underground, causing serious harm to the consumer. It is the external resale channels that should be controlled.”
Other European countries, such as Belgium or France, restrict resale in their regulations. The UK has just announced a law prohibiting the resale of tickets at a higher price than the original price. The measures will apply to any platform that resells tickets and companies that breach the regulations could be fined with penalties of up to 10% of their global turnover. However, football and Wimbledon tennis will be excluded from the legislation.
Blockchain worker
Signe is a company born in 1982 in Spain. “We have evolved from physical protection – secure paper, holograms, smart cards, passports, academic degrees, official titles – towards digital security: qualified time stamping, decentralized identity, document verification, electronic evidence authentication, distributed ledger and anti-tampering platforms,” comments Antonio Pinedo, CEO of SigneBlock, the digital and business development part of the Signe Group. The company is also established in Latin America, in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Chile and the Dominican Republic.
He explains that the EU regulatory changes, led by eIDAS 2, MiCA, are “the new wave of consumer protection against the growing need to combat phenomena such as abusive or fraudulent ticket resale”. Blockchain-based ticketing systems have several advantages to combat these practices, Pinedo estimates: “access becomes a unique token, traceability of the entire chain of ownership, smart contracts to stop speculation, integration with verifiable identity and compatibility with hybrid solutions.” “Advanced solutions that integrate secure authentication, trust services, verifiable identity, and blockchain technology will not only help fight abusive resale, but will drive a new, more transparent, accessible, and secure ecosystem for organizers, artists, and spectators,” Pinedo points out.
Progress in Europe
Reselling is particularly harmful to football. A trained army of robots can collect tickets and harm clubs and fans. A Czech company called TruCrowd proposes a system that integrates identity verification into the purchasing process.
There are three stages: preventing automated purchases, blocking resale outside official channels by linking each ticket to an identity, and controlling access to the venue using facial recognition. This method will prevent QR, NFC or barcode-based entries from being shared or tampered with. But the application of facial biometrics depends on the legislation of each country. In Spain, for example, the Basic Data Protection Law may not be violated.