Sports Illustrated Tickets moves NFT service to Avalanche

Avalanche has purchased a stake in Sports Illustrated Tickets and 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 enabled by Box Office offer features including NFT videos, exclusive offers and loyalty benefits, SI Tickets said in a press release.

Sports Illustrated Tickets is a secondary market ticketing platform under the Sports Illustrated umbrella. It leases the Sports Illustrated brand from a brand management firm but is a separate company from the embattled magazine, SI Tickets CEO David Lane stressed in an interview.

Since the platform’s release in May 2023, roughly 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 developing Avalanche, was in talks with SI Tickets to support the platform back then, John Nahas, Ava Labs’ senior vice president of business development, said. Less than a year later, SI Tickets switched chains.

“Polygon had their moment, and then they [SI Tickets] came back to us and said, ‘Look, a lot of the things that you guys promised that you would do and help with etc., and on the tech side, seems to be true with all the things you’re doing with everybody else, and we’re eager to switch over to Avalanche,’” Nahas said.

Ava Labs apparently sees a lot of promise in NFT ticketing. It invested in another Web3 ticketing platform named tixbase, and South Korean concert ticket platform Dreamus integrated with Avalanche.

But as far as NFT tickets go, SI Tickets’ Box Office “is the main leg out of a multi-leg stool,” Nahas said.

SI Tickets’ Lane expressed optimism about Web3’s potential for the ticketing world, noting that the status quo of barcode scans are “useless” in comparison to NFT tickets that make verification easier and can serve as mementoes after the event.