“It’s a bit of the Taylor Swift problem,” says Dominic Carbonaro, head of consumer verticals at Ava Labs, the main developer company backing Avalanche. “Concerts are announced and there’s a huge influx of purchases, mainly from bots. They buy all the tickets, and then the sales happen on the secondary market.”
The RTB model, he said, “shifts where the secondary sales market happens.”
Traditionally, event organizers sell tickets at face value and much of the value created by overwhelming demand is later captured by companies like StubHub, SeatGeek or Vivid Seats. FIFA’s approach seeks to bring some of that activity back into its own ecosystem, part of a wider strategy around the 2026 World Cup, with the organization seeking tighter control over everything from ticket sales and fan data to stadium branding and commercial activity around venues.
According to figures shared by Ava Labs, more than 100,000 RTBs have been issued to date. More than 50,000 Club World Cup tickets have been distributed in bundles with RTBs. Secondary market volume for RTTs has exceeded $15 million, while combined RTB and RTT volume has exceeded $25 million.
The numbers are notable because they represent something the crypto industry has struggled with in recent years: a blockchain application tied to a real product rather than speculation.