UK Cricket Club Will Issue This Season's Tickets Over a Blockchain

A county cricket club in the U.K. will use blockchain-based ticketing for all domestic and international fixtures played at its home ground in 2020.

According to a report Friday from industry magazine TheTicketingBusiness, Lancashire Cricket Club teamed with the blockchain ticketing provider TIXnGO.

The club said the new blockchain tickets are traceable, unique to the purchaser and nearly impossible to counterfeit. The system also includes a new facility that simplifies the process of transferring or reselling tickets.

Eighteen months in development, the new platform tested the technology during the 2019 season, according to the report.

Friday's release marks one of the first examples of sporting organizations using blockchain-secured ticketing technology, according to John Nuttal, Lancashire's head of ticketing and digital systems. With more and more ticket sales being made online, it's "vitally important that we continue to improve the digital ticking technologies," he said.

“Blockchain technology addresses many of the ticketing issues that both sports organisations and fans alike face," said David Hornby, U.K. managing director of SecuTix, Lancashire's existing ticketing provider and the sister organization of TIXnGO. "It easily plugs into Lancashire’s existing ticketing system to give fans a better and more secure digital mobile tickets experience.”

The European soccer association UEFA said it was experimenting blockchain-based ticketing app, announcing a successful trial in 2018. But other sports entities have trialled the technology within a much broader range of use cases. The U.S. ice hockey team LA Kings introduced a blockchain app last year to help fans verify official merchandise, and in 2018, Italian soccer club Juventus said it was launching a token that would give fans a "voice."