Disclosure: Our aim is to function services that we predict you may discover fascinating and helpful. If you buy them, Entrepreneur might get a small share of the income from the sale from our commerce companions.
When the band Oasis introduced their reunion tour in early 2025, tens of millions of followers rushed to safe tickets—solely to have their goals crushed by cancellations, inflated costs, and scams. Oasis followers misplaced an estimated £1.6 million ($2 million) to ticket scams within the first few weeks after tickets went on sale, in accordance with latest reviews. In the meantime, a complicated cybercrime crew stole and resold a whole bunch of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour utilizing stolen bank cards and automatic bots.
These high-profile instances spotlight a pervasive downside plaguing the $1.14 trillion dwell occasion business: Ticket bots and scalpers are stealing the enjoyment of dwell experiences from actual followers.
Regardless of laws within the U.S. and EU making ticket bots unlawful, enforcement has remained almost inconceivable. The issue has turn into so extreme that bipartisan initiatives such because the TICKET Act lately handed unanimously by means of the U.S. Home Committee, and even President Trump issued govt orders concentrating on ticket scalping.
Alan Gelfand, founder and CEO of IdBase, realized everybody within the business was overlooking a easy reply to this complicated downside.
“Everybody’s attempting to resolve the issue by detecting bots. It is a shedding battle. As tech will get extra refined, so do the bots,” Gelfand says. “We flipped the issue on its head and mentioned, what if as a substitute of attempting to determine bots, we simply confirm that somebody is human as a substitute?”
By leveraging confirmed biometric id verification know-how (the identical governments use), he constructed a staff at IdBase to create a platform that guarantees not solely to remove ticket bots but in addition to reinforce safety and enhance the general fan expertise at dwell occasions.
IdBase’s know-how, known as authenTICKET™, creates a seamless verification course of that it says confirms a ticket purchaser’s id by means of authorities ID scanning and biometric verification (both facial or voice recognition). Their strategy is revolutionary as a result of it really works with all ticket codecs—not simply cellular tickets—and integrates immediately with current venue and ticketing infrastructures, which might result in vital financial savings for the venues.
The true price of ticket bots
The dimensions of the issue is staggering. In response to business knowledge, as much as 40% of ticket web site visitors comes from bots, with some occasions seeing as a lot as 95% of their visitors from these automated applications.
Tickets for fashionable reveals are regularly resold at 300% to 700% of face worth, with some instances seeing markups as excessive as 7,000%. What initially price $100 can abruptly price followers hundreds of {dollars} on secondary markets.
However this is not nearly inflated costs. Venues lose helpful buyer knowledge and safety management, artists carry out to empty seats when scalped tickets do not promote, and bank card and ticketing corporations face large fraud and chargeback prices. The business as an entire loses vital income that could possibly be reinvested in higher experiences for followers.
Dr. Timothy Kay, IdBase’s CTO and a extremely regarded technologist who constructed a precursor to Apple’s Siri, explains their technical strategy: “We’re not storing precise biometric knowledge—simply safe templates that can’t be reverse-engineered. Our one-to-one matching course of is considerably safer and dependable than opponents who attempt to use biometrics because the ticket itself, which we consider is a really pricey and dangerous strategy.”
A distinct strategy to fixing the issue
IdBase stands other than opponents in a number of key methods. Whereas many corporations focus solely on bot detection, IdBase has constructed an id verification infrastructure that makes bot purchases inconceivable from the beginning.
“Identification Authorization Networks” like IdBase symbolize the way forward for digital transactions, creating safe ecosystems the place id could be verified as soon as and used throughout a number of platforms, in accordance with a latest market report by Liminal. This strategy solves a elementary challenge within the ticketing ecosystem: establishing belief on the level of buy.
“We’re not simply one other ticketing app,” says Kieron O’Shea, IdBase’s Chief Technique Officer. “We are the id layer of the dwell occasion business. Consider us because the Visa of ticketing—the corporate that constructed the cost community and will get a small piece of every transaction.”
The corporate has already accomplished profitable know-how pilots and is now partnered with Tickets.com, a subsidiary of Main League Baseball that facilitates greater than 60 million ticket gross sales yearly. They’re in discussions with a number of ticketing suppliers in North America and Europe for upcoming infrastructure experiments.
Their enterprise mannequin is easy: IdBase fees a 1% service charge (capped at $1 per ticket) on tickets offered by means of accomplice platforms. A small portion goes to biometrics companions, ticketing corporations, and the venues themselves, with IdBase retaining 80% of the charge. With the worldwide occasions market valued at greater than $1.14 trillion, the overall addressable market is gigantic.
Advantages past bot prevention
Whereas eliminating bots is their main focus, IdBase’s know-how supplies extra advantages to all the dwell occasion ecosystem.
For followers, the platform means no extra frustration attempting to purchase tickets solely to search out occasions offered out in seconds as a result of bots snatched up the tickets, the corporate says. It additionally reduces the chance of buying fraudulent tickets, which impacts roughly 12% of ticket patrons.
For venues, the know-how supplies enhanced safety by figuring out precisely who’s within the constructing, helpful buyer knowledge for improved experiences, and decreased workers prices by means of extra environment friendly entry processes, the corporate says.
For artists and groups, IdBase says it ensures tickets get into the fingers of actual followers on the costs they meant, moderately than seeing their followers gouged by scalpers on secondary markets.
Rob Williams, IdBase’s Chief Product Officer who beforehand served as CPO at AudienceView and Director of Expertise on the NEC Group, emphasizes the corporate’s concentrate on person expertise: “We have designed this to be utterly frictionless. Followers have the choice to examine in through geofence proximity notifications on their cellphone earlier than they even attain the gate, much like how TSA PreCheck works at airports. This implies no ready in ID examine strains.”
Seeking to the longer term
As The Verge lately reported, the way forward for on-line ticketing is at a essential inflection level, with each regulators and customers demanding change. In contrast to many startups getting into regulated industries, IdBase is uniquely positioned to profit from elevated regulation, as their know-how permits compliance with current and forthcoming anti-bot laws.
IdBase is elevating capital to quickly scale up product growth and meet rising demand. With an skilled management staff that features former executives from industries like sports activities, leisure, finance, and know-how, they’re well-positioned to be first to market with this proprietary know-how, creating limitations for others to repeat or observe.
Their advisory board contains high-profile business veterans corresponding to Greg Saretsky (former WestJet CEO), Robert DuPuy (former MLB president and COO), and William Jones (former head of authorized at Goldman Sachs Intl.).
“We’re not simply specializing in the know-how,” Gelfand says. “We’re constructing a platform that aligns with current and upcoming laws. Legal guidelines just like the BOTS Act within the U.S. have been troublesome to implement, and new proposals just like the BOSS and SWIFT Act goal to handle these limitations. As extra international locations such because the UK transfer in direction of nationally capping resale, the necessity for enforcement turns into much more essential. IdBase supplies the technological infrastructure to make these legal guidelines really work.”
By serving to venues and ticketing corporations undertake ideas like id verification and safe check-in processes, Gelfand and IdBase are bringing the dwell occasion business into a brand new period. Combining technological innovation with sensible options, they’re paving the best way for a fairer, safer future for dwell occasions.
In ten years, IdBase goals to be greater than only a know-how firm—they need to turn into the worldwide identification spine of the dwell occasion business, fostering belief and connection universally. The chance to remove ticket bots utterly from the business and return billions in worth to followers, artists, and venues is inside attain.
If you would like to be part of the IdBase mission and study extra about their funding alternative, go to their web site to study extra: make investments.idbase.com
Disclaimer: In investing choice, traders should depend on their very own examination of the issuer and the phrases of the providing, together with the deserves and dangers concerned. IdBase has filed a Type C with the Securities and Trade Fee in reference to its providing, a duplicate of which can be obtained by means of their web site: make investments.idbase.com. This text is a paid promotion for IdBase’s Reg CF providing.
