Afterparty Raises $4 Million to Launch NFT Ticketing Platform
Courtesy of Afterparty.

Afterparty Raises $4 Million to Launch NFT Ticketing Platform

Web3 startup Afterparty has raised $4 million to launch an NFT-based ticketing platform for live events, with plans to use its Utopian NFTs as event tickets after a trial run at a Las Vegas music festival last month.


Afterparty landed the new capital—which it described as an extension of its $3 millions seed round from last fall—from more than two dozen investors, including angel investors like Paris Hilton and Jason Calacanis and VC firms like early-stage crypto fund Blockchange. Existing investors Acrew Capital and TenOneTen Ventures also participated. (Disclosure: dot.LA co-founder and chairman Spencer Rascoff is an investor in Afterparty and contributed to the round.)

Afterparty has now raised $7 million in total funding since launching in August 2021, co-founder and CEO David Fields told dot.LA. Fields, a former executive at Michael Eisner’s investment firm The Tornante Company, said Afterparty is “building technology to enable creators and music artists to build direct connections with their fans and realize the full potential of Web3.”

The startup trialed its NFT ticketing technology in Las Vegas last month, at what it called the “first NFT-gated festival ever”—meaning nobody could get in unless they owned one of Afterparty’s Utopian NFTs or were a guest of an NFT holder. Fields said over 6,000 people attended the event.

The Utopian NFT collection features 1,500 pieces of art depicting headshots of futuristic, cyberpunk-esque robots. On NFT exchange OpenSea, the NFTs are listed at prices ranging from 5.35 ETH (roughly $16,400) to 50 ETH (upwards of $153,000).

Owning one of these NFTs—some of which the company minted earlier this year at a party at its Afterparty House in the Hollywood Hills—comes with perks, including access to future Afterparty festivals. Afterparty is now planning a Los Angeles festival for this coming October—with access coming through its upcoming Guardian NFT collection, which will provide holders with “lifetime festival membership,” it said.

Afterparty’s venture into event ticketing is an attempt to disrupt services like Ticketmaster, which often charge hefty transaction fees. Local startups like Granted, which raised a $3 million seed round this February, are also looking to use cryptocurrency and NFTs to wrest power away from ticketing brokers.

Fields noted that blockchain technology also makes it impossible to scalp an NFT ticket. He added that Afterparty is involved in discussions with other festivals interested in integrating its NFT ticketing system, but wouldn’t disclose specifics.

“The ability to buy a ticket every subsequent year… if you had that in the first year of Coachella or the first year of Burning Man, that would be something that'd be really valuable,” Fields said.

Afterparty also plans to allow music artists to mint their own NFTs through the company and use those as tickets for their own events and festivals.

“Collectively, [artists] get 0% of secondary sales today,” Fields said. “$10 billion-plus of global secondary sales in concerts are going to other parties, and I believe NFTs are going to be a really big part of the story about how artists and venues can recapture a lot more of the value in that market.”

https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
Proptech Startup Snappt Raises $100 Million To Help Landlords Flag Fraudulent Rental Applications
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

Sign up for dot.LA’s daily newsletter for the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Snappt, a West Hollywood-based proptech startup that helps landlords detect fraudulent rental application documents, has landed a $100 million Series A funding round led by venture capital giant Insight Partners, it announced Tuesday.

The startup is the part of an expanding real estate tech sector that raised a record $9.5 billion in funding last year to produce products ranging from retail analytics to energy efficiency technology to tenant management platforms.

Read moreShow less
Keerthi Vedantam

Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.

https://twitter.com/KeerthiVedantam
keerthi@dot.la
Neo-bank Dave makes it debut on the Nasdaq with a billboard.
Neo-bank Dave makes it debut on the Nasdaq with a billboard.

West Hollywood-based banking app Dave made its much-hyped debut as a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Thursday.

Shares in Dave (ticker: DAVE) opened trading at $8.27, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $3 billion. After swooning close to $7 per share, Dave’s stock rebounded above the $9 mark before closing the day at $8.53.

Read moreShow less
Pat Maio
Pat Maio has held various reporting and editorial management positions over the past 25 years, having specialized in business and government reporting. He has held reporting jobs with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, Dow Jones News and other newspapers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
RELATEDTRENDING
LA TECH JOBS
interchangeLA