Avalanche has purchased a stake in Sports Illustrated Tickets and will become the blockchain provider for its NFT-enabled ticketing service, Box Office.
Box Office is a blockchain-based ticketing service that individuals can use to set up paid or free events. The so-called Super Tickets NFT tickets powered by Box Office offer features such as NFT videos, exclusive offers and loyalty benefits, SI Tickets said in a press release.
Sports Illustrated Tickets is a secondary market ticket sales platform under the Sports Illustrated umbrella. The company leases the Sports Illustrated brand from a brand management company, but is separate from the controversial magazine, SI Tickets CEO David Lane emphasized in an interview.
Since the platform’s release in May 2023, approximately 300,000 tickets have been issued through Box Office, SI Tickets said.
Box Office initially launched on Polygon with support from Consensys. Ava Labs, the company that developed Avalanche, was in talks with SI Tickets at the time to support the platform, said John Nahas, senior vice president of business development for Ava Labs. Less than a year later, SI Tickets switched chains.
“Polygon had its moment, and then she [SI Tickets] came back to us and said, “Look, a lot of the things you promised you would do and help with, etc., and on the technical side, seem to be true of all the things you’re doing with everyone else. and we would like to switch to Avalanche,” Nahas said.
Ava Labs apparently sees a lot of promise in NFT ticketing. It invested in another Web3 ticketing platform called tixbase, and South Korean concert ticketing platform Dreamus integrated with Avalanche.
But when it comes to NFT tickets, SI Tickets’ Box Office is “the most important leg of a multi-legged stool,” Nahas said.
SI Tickets’ Lane expressed optimism about Web3’s potential for the ticketing world, noting that the status quo of barcode scanning is “useless” compared to NFT tickets that make verification easier and can serve as a post-event souvenir.