Ticket fraud has turned into a $4-billion-a-year illegal business, according to an estimate from Iovation, a U.S.-based fraud prevention company. Fortunately, a Vancouver tech startup believes they have found the answer to this crisis.
“We’re just a local start-up company that figured out a solution to this world problem,” said Alan Gelfand, founder and CEO of Fair Ticket Solutions.
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Fair Ticket Solutions has created a third party verification platform called AuthenTICKET, which would make every ticket-holder would have to “check in”, something Gelfand compares to airline travel.
“When you put a verification platform like ours in place, you can’t have fraudulent tickets any more,” said Gelfand. “The airline industry has it right. They make people check in … and everybody does it. They know that checking in creates safety.”
Gelfand really believes in AuthenTICKET based on the pilot projects it has run with True North Sports and Entertainment, the Manitoba-based company that owns the Winnipeg Jets. AuthenTICKET has the opportunity to also reduce both the rise of “bots” (computer programs that automatically snap up large amounts of tickets), and the speculative re-selling of tickets.
Counterfeiting scams are the biggest threat to this industry and the ticket-holders, which is why Fair Ticket Solutions and AuthenTICKET have made it their number one priority to solve this on-going issue.