Ticketmaster and Avenged Sevenfold Score With NFT for Event-Gating

Event ticketing leader Ticketmaster appears poised to scale an experiment with NFTs enabling holders of certain tokens to get special access and discounts to events.

As reported by crypto newsletter Decrypt on Monday (March 27), Ticketmaster announced it is enabling holders of the NFT called Deathbats Club minted for heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold to use the token to access concert tickets and discounts, which can be considerable.

According to Decrypt, “In Avenged Sevenfold’s case, owners of the 10,000 Deathbats Club ethereum NFTs were offered early access to buy tickets to the band’s upcoming New York City and Los Angeles arena shows in June. Frontman Matt Sanders — who goes by M. Shadows — said that about 1,000 total tickets were purchased between the two shows with the NFT-gating feature.”

When buying Avenged Sevenfold tickets online, Ticketmaster prompts holders of the NFTs running on the ethereum blockchain to connect a wallet and verify identity, then the purchase proceeds normally through the event ticketing process.

A Twitter post showed that one Deathbat NFT holder saved about $540 in the base price and service fees using the token, which effectively places holders at the front of the line of ticket buyers, then extends special discounts if programmed to do so, as it was in this case for specific shows on the band’s current North American tour.

According to Decrypt, Sanders was instrumental in creating NFT-gating capabilities after meeting David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s EVP of global music, at the 2022 NFT LA conference, now known as Outer Edge LA.

“Linking to live shows creates a unique value, and we developed our token-gating capabilities based on how artists want to connect their community to their concerts,” Marcus told Decrypt.

According to Decrypt, Ticketmaster “has minted almost 15 million digital collectibles tied to events, including NFL games, via the Flow blockchain and ethereum scaling network Polygon. The token-gating feature is now available to any artist with its own NFT collection or that has partnered with an NFT community, and the functionality can unlock other benefits for fans, as well.”

The reporting added, “Beyond creating a tokenized community of like-minded fans, [Marcus] envisioned NFTs being pivotal for reimagining fan engagement and loyalty rewards. But that was only going to work at scale, he said, if major, entrenched companies got involved too — firms like Spotify, which has been experimenting with token-gating features, and indeed Ticketmaster too.”