The French government’s inter-ministerial envoy for Olympics and other major sporting events preparations, Michel Cadot, has recommended using blockchain technology for ticketing in major sporting events that the country will host in the future.
According to a report by Ticketing Business News, the recommendation was made as part of an inquiry into the disorder experienced during the UEFA Champions League final played in Paris on May 28.
Cadot explained in his report that the delay in the kick-off time in the matchups between English side Liverpool and Spanish football club Real Madrid was due to the mass counterfeiting of tickets for the event. The inquiry found that as much as 10% of 15,000 tickets allocated to fans of Liverpool were counterfeit.
The occurrence could have been prevented by issuing the tickets digitally as NFTs, he pointed out. The practice is already approved and is being used by France. However, he reiterated that deploying it for the upcoming 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympics, which France would host, is a must.
An excerpt from Cadot’s report describes the NFT tickets as:
“The total dematerialization of non-transferable tickets, transmitted by the organizer only a few days before by SMS messaging and comprising a rotating QR code using blockchain technology, activated only in a virtual perimeter corresponding to the security perimeter of the site, which can be checked first at the pre-filtering and then deactivated once the visitor has entered the competition site.”
Ticketing has been talked up as one of the strong use cases for NFTs. NFT ticketing will prevent counterfeiting of tickets. It will also end scalping of tickets, a common practice where tickets are bought up and resold for higher than the official amount.
NFT and sports crossovers increasing globally
Aside from being used for ticketing, NFTs have been finding more use cases for adoption in the sporting world. Many sports events, teams, and personalities have released collectible items as NFTs.
The digital currency industry, in general, has also been finding more acceptance in the sports industry. A case in point is the turnaround of the National Football League (NFL). As noted by CNBC, the league began to allow teams to reach sponsorship deals with digital currency firms earlier this year.
Recently, the English Premier League filed a trademark request to use its name and logo in metaverse-related goods and services.
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