Access All Areas September 2018 | Page 50

WHAT’S HOT? SEPTEMBER | TECH A monthly look at the newest products and services for the live events industry Cosmic vision Electric dreams The Cosmic Truss U-Torm is a flexible solution to hanging drop positions for lighting fixtures. As well as projection or other equipment in a completely modular design. The system can be set up as different shapes according to your requirements. www.tourgosolution.com Chillisauce has launched a series of tours around London in electric Renault Twizy cars. The Twizy, which looks a bit like a large quadbike, is a two-seater vehicle designed for city environments. Chillisauce’s Twizy Tours take users on one of three tours around the city. They are painted in the Union Jack and guided by a GPS system around London, sharing facts on history, heritage and culture. chillisauce.com Drink up Drinks-only marketing company Garnish has announced a partnership with Portech Systems, who are offering new technology it hopes will revolutionise its services. Garnish is a communications agency in the drinks sector, and provides advice on how to set up a brand, how to distribute products, and more. The new technology uses barcode scanners and system software to record all stock in/out, samples and sales. It allocates time stamps to each sample and sale, letting the company know best sales periods and ensuring staffing is correct. garnishcommunications.com 50 Blockchain blocks unfair ticketing By James Morgan Ed Sheeran’s recent world tour grossed $214m. The ticketing strategy set by Sheeran’s manager was to make every effort to cut out the online touts and ensure that fans can buy tickets at face value. But how can promoters and artists develop trust and long term relationships with fans; when Ticketmaster research found that about 60% of the hottest tickets are bought by bots? Even tickets for free events, like Pope Francis’s visit to New York in 2015, were gobbled up by bots and sold for thousands of dollars on secondary sites. Add to this, primary ticket sellers - the seller appointed by the organiser – may allocate some of the tickets to their own secondary websites to hike ticket prices too. Or, touts offer fake tickets to desperate fans outside the gigs? Promoters and artists are not happy when everyday fans cant buy tickets or if there is a cancelation, refunds are drawn out for months. According to Rob Edwards advisor to London- based Aventus Protocol Foundation – the open source Blockchain ticketing protocol - offers total control over these issues. Artists and their fan bases can develop a relationship based on transparency, fairness and trust. Rob explains that the chain allows the organiser to create their business rules. The organiser determines a set amount of tickets at particular prices; then sets other rules for those tickets that are going to be issued. A rule could be to set to not allow reselling or tickets transfers. These are embedded in every ticket code and sold electronically. Fans can be comfortable about buying an authentic ticket; the artist to fan relationship. For fans, it’s not a complicated transaction and there is little difference to the usual purchase process.