Ethereum Address: 0xe086032fFC97E0707602bc57273cf1767383a441

Astadius

Purpose

Astadius aims to provide sports stadiums such as football clubs with a system for selling season tickets and individual match day tickets or VIP packages. It will include a means of selling away match tickets as well such that the person attending the match is known, with the aim of eliminating touting. Dynamic pricing can be employed to maximise attendance and revenue.

Descripion

Problem

Large successful clubs like Manchester United [1] or Arsenal have a different supply/demand problem than smaller, less successful clubs, but even Arsenal can have problems in some scenarios [2]. A single system is required to work them all and handle all these problems:

Some teams sellout most matches, yet some struggle to sell tickets.
Away matches provide smaller allocations for fans, so tickets are harder to come by, causing touting and clubs being blamed for the behaviour of people at games when they didn’t sell that person a ticket.
People buy as many tickets as they can for popular games, regardless of whether they intend to go, so they can make money selling them on, or to remain part of a loyalty system that rewards people applying (regardless of attending as they sell the tickets on to others) and some clubs have resorted to punishing people caught doing so [3].
Systems can be hard to use and regular customers can get frustrated with them.
Empty seats make for poor atmosphere at games, and it doesn’t look good on television.
Clubs do not know who attends games, only who they sell tickets to, yet they are held responsible for the behaviour of those attending. -Counterfeit tickets and ticket touts.

Solution

Astadius is an application that provides sports venues with a full solution for their ticketing needs. The examples mentioned are for football, but it works equally well for any sport. It will allow:

Season tickets to be sold for all home games, with a variety of flexible options, such as including every match for all competitions (such as in football), or only including some (such as the league games) but ensuring priority on purchasing additional competitions that the team may enter (such as cup games). Various levels of season tickets would be available at each price levels, such as executive, standard or junior.
Individual seats to be sold for events at the stadium with a full seat selection showing ticket price bands and where seats are available, and also a view from each seat before purchase.
Additional items to be able to be added to the sale, such as car parking tickets or a food vouchers to offer reduced price food if purchased in advance.
Season ticket holders can sell an individual ticket for a match they cannot attend, using a fans’ ticket exchange system. Only validated people can purchase the secondary market tickets, and the venue can apply various options to the sales of these tickets. For example they may wish to specify sales can only happen when the club have sold a specific percentage of the primary market tickets to protect their non-season ticket sales. In addition, it would be possible to allow tickets to be resold at a range of prices such that the club and the person selling the ticket both get an income from it (though the person selling probably won’t get more than the face value).
Tickets for events at other venues can be sold (away matches), to ensure that the person attending the game is the person the ticket is purchased for to prevent touting. These may be in two parts, as most other venues will provide their own physical tickets, but this allows clubs to add additional checks where the two part-tickets are sold together should they wish to do so.
A loyalty/lottery system will be available for away games based on criteria set by the club where supply exceeds demand, such as a percentage of the total being available for each level of season ticket and giving those who apply for most tickets a higher chance of obtaining them, to discourage people from only applying for the ‘best’ games.
A secondary fans exchange can also be made available for away tickets, by allowing for tickets to be transferred to specified ('approved') other fans which is unusual but popular with fans [4].
For smaller clubs, a dynamic ticket pricing (auctioning) system for tickets that are harder to sell can be employed to try to get the maximum revenue whilst selling as many seats as possible to ensure the best atmosphere in the stadium (and it looks better on the television not to have empty seats) [5].
Assurance for everyone that counterfeit tickets are not circulating, and the knowledge that ticket touts cannot be outside the stadium trying to sell tickets or counterfeit tickets.

How it Works

Astadius would be a full website application, that is controlled by the relevant club and integrated with their membership and other systems. It would be very simple to use for the fans and back-office staff alike. The club would have full control over all the available seats for the primary and secondary markets for ticket sales.

Usage of the Aventus Protocol and Overall Ecosystem

The Aventus protocol provides the underlying system for this application [6], and would be used to meet the primary market ticket sales and the secondary fans’ ticket exchange and dynamic pricing system.

It would utilise the Aventus access control system to whatever level the club wanted to eliminate ticket touting as much as possible.

Since users will need to pay by credit card, the Aventus services layer would be used for Ethereum account management and payment processing.

Monetisation

Astadius can generate revenue for the supplier by:

The initial sale to the relevant club, with whatever bespoke work and internal user training is required.
A commission from each ticket sold.
Analytics platform for the club to understand who is buying their tickets.

It will also generate revenue for the club who use it, by increased ticket sales (primary and secondary markets) resulting in less empty seats.

Finally, it will generate revenue for those fans who can sell on a ticket that they otherwise would not have been able to attend.

Customers and Acquisition Strategy

There are a lot of sports venues, and all are potential customers, but of course the best course is to talk to those with the biggest problems, and biggest crowds in the Premier League, such as Manchester United or Arsenal.

References

[1] “We have averaged over 99% of attendance capacity for our Premier League matches in each of the last 18 years.” http://ir.manutd.com/company-information/business-model.aspx [2]“Empty seats at Premier League games shows what happens when you have live football on TV six days in a row” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/04/21/empty-seats-at-premier-league-games-shows-what-happens-when-you/ [3] “Concern was raised when the regulations were announced in the summer, with supporters facing lengthy bans for passing tickets to mates at face value or for free” http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/manchester-united-away-tickets-ban-11995557 [4] “M.U.S.T proposal for away ticket exchange comes into force” http://action.joinmust.org/index.php/blog/entry/must-proposal-for-away-ticket-exchange-comes-into-force/ [5] “Dynamic ticket pricing makes successful debut in NFL” http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/10/26/Leagues-and-Governing-Bodies/NFL-dynamic.aspx [6]“Aventus Whitepaper” https://aventus.io/doc/whitepaper.pdf

Aventus-Network-Services / aventus-dapp-proposals

Astadius Stadia Ticketing System for Football Clubs in particular #13