GUTS is Taking on the Ticketing Industry with its Blockchain-based Smart-Ticketing App

Netherlands-based startup, GUTS, is utilising the blockchain to create a smart-ticketing app and transparent ticketing ecosystem to combat huge ticket reselling markups and ticket fraud.

The company has been selling tickets registered on the blockchain since 2016, but concluded its crowdsale of Guaranteed Entrance Tokens (GET) in 2017, raising €6,253,185 million. So far, they’ve sold more than 10,000 tickets for almost 50 events in the past year. They are projected to sell over 1 million tickets in 2019.

Tickets are bought through the company’s mobile app, and unlike traditional ticketing companies, provides the buyer with with a dynamic QR code that changes with time and ownership. The company guarantees the authenticity of all tickets on the platform and entrance to the venue with the purchase of a ticket. Users are able to sell their tickets anonymously at any time, however, not at a profit, and only on the GUTS platform.

The GET Token is added to the smart ticket of the consumer, and represents a certain action, e.g. reselling, or a smart ticket, or a credit that can be used for purchasing food etc. during the event associated with the ticket. Event organisers also require GET in order to sell smart tickets, which can be acquired from token holders on the open market. To address the problem of long-term token price inflation, a certain amount of GET acquired by the event organiser will be burned, decreasing the total supply and relative demand, thereby increasing each token’s value.

The GET protocol which underpins the Guaranteed Entrance Tokens provides the tokens with a stable store of value on a user’s wallet or smart-ticket by locking a certain fiat value to each token for each event cycle. This value has a lower limit of €0.50/GET, but does not limit the upward price mobility of the token on the open market.

The GET Foundation behind the platform has arranged deals with partners already established in the industry, including Hekwerk Theaterproducties, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent theatre companies, which secures protocol usage for 310.000 tickets in 2019, and gained support from several prominent artists, including Dutch DJ, Martin Garrix. It has also won awards from the Dutch Fintech Awards 2017 and Buma Music Meets Tech, and was nominated at the Computable Awards 2017.

Nonetheless, the company’s goal is far from completely usurping control of the ticketing industry as a whole just yet. As they mention on their GET protocol two-pager:

“While bypassing all current ticketing stakeholders to create a new and completely disruptive platform seems tempting, GUTS Tickets has learned over the last 16 months that this strategy would ultimately fail. The thresholds required to penetrate the market are too great, and adoption of the GET Protocol would be severely limited. To maximize the chances for adoption, the GET Foundation, supported by launching customer GUTS Tickets, will collaborate with current market stakeholders and will use existing infrastructure in the value chain.”