The physical is the digital transformation, in more ways than one. Sports Illustrated has joined the ranks of traditional magazine publishers to seek innovative, digital-first maneuvers to keep their brands relevant.
For Sports Illustrated, or SI, it has gone down the “self-serve ticketing” route. Over the past week, SI has launched “Box Office,” the brand’s new take on ticketing.
Let’s take a look at what we know from the early stages of the Box Office so far.
Sports Illustrated is turning to ticketing
Ticketing has been a top priority for NFT advocates since the early stages of NFT evolution. Convenience is a natural: Ticketing has long been dominated by a rigid, high-fee industry lacking innovation for a long time. Ticket resale has been a focal point of the American regulatory debate, and the industry has remained largely unchanged over the past decade.
Moreover, aside from the lack of innovation across the industry, ticketing often feels like a hand in a glove fit for NFT solutions; In essence, tickets are generally seen as a direct, peer-to-peer transaction between two normally untrusted parties — right in the wheelhouse of what NFTs can improve.
Sports Illustrated joins a growing list of well-established print media companies like TIME Magazine, SLAM, and National Geographic (among others) to explore interacting with NFTs or crypto more broadly. In fact, around this time last year, we saw SI wrappers used in eBay’s first NFT issue.
While magazines have been running out of covers, SI is unique in its approach to shifting toward ticketing.
Polygon (MATIC) offers the blockchain infrastructure for SI Tickets. | Source: MATIC:USD on TradingView.com
Box Office: The Web3 partners that make it all happen
Sports Illustrated works with ConsenSys and Polygon to manage a marketplace that claims “50 million tickets to more than 250,000 sports, concerts and shows,” SI Tickets CEO David Lane said in a statement. Release press release. SI Tickets effectively shorts ticket partners and claims to be overpriced due to its less centralized nature.
We took a quick look at US consumer offerings, and said… “What’s the cheapest NBA ticket I can get for the Denver Nuggets vs. Phoenix Suns 6 game?”
The cheapest we could find at the time at SI Tickets was $132, even advertised as the payment method; Market leader Ticketmaster’s lowest bid had an advertised sub-total of $143, with $32 in service fees, bringing the grand total to $175. Another similar traditional mainstay, StubHub, offered a ticket price of $117, but when billed the total closed at $155 – with total fees at $38.
While it’s just a one-off example — and not taking into account elements like seat selection — there’s clearly a time in the day worth considering in Sports Illustrated’s new platform. And the bigger takeaway here is that there’s obviously a significant fee from traditional ticket offerings, in this case, around 20% of the initially advertised ticket price.