BitTicket wins first UK festival deal

Citizen Ticket has signed its first deal with a UK festival as it offers its blockchain technology to protect customers.

The firm’s BitTicket technology has linked up with Magical Festival, a three-day arts and music festival in Sussex.

It uses a wallet feature to store tickets, meaning that any ticket from any provider is held in one place and promoters can track the whole ticket journey from purchase to entry.

They utilise identity profiling and the openness of the blockchain to root out ticket touts and bots.

Yello Balolia, Director of Magical Festival, said: “We were instantly drawn to using BitTicket, as the fully transparent blockchain system is perfectly aligned to Magical’s ethos of openness, and challenging existing ways of thinking. It’s great that even small festivals can benefit from this brand new technology.

“One huge benefit of this pioneering system is that event producers know who is actually attending the festival, rather than who purchased tickets. This ensures an accurate line of communication with attendees, making it a win-win for our customers and Magical.”

Citizen Ticket will also ticket the DANI Awards, which is Northern Ireland’s premier digital industry Awards, in addition to ticketing for Hoxton Hall, a performing arts centre in London.

Naomh McElhatton, Director, Smart NI, said: “Due to the significant growth year-on-year of the DANI Awards, we knew we had to discover a more secure method of selling tickets, which would protect against fraud and ensure that every ticket sale is traceable.

“At DANI & SMART NI we are all about celebrating innovation, digitalisation and discovering unique ways of doing things. We couldn’t wait to partner with Citizen Ticket to roll out this brand new technology.  We are delighted to be the very first company in Ireland to pioneer this new technology.”