Hungarian ticketing platform funcode.hu has launched FunPass, an official resale marketplace developed with ticketing technology provider Nuweb Group.
The platform is designed to provide a safer alternative to unofficial secondary ticketing sites by keeping ticket resale within funcode.hu’s official system.
This allows the company to guarantee ticket validity and prevent tickets from being resold above the price paid by the original purchaser.
As many as 30% to 35% of tickets for some major concerts may be resold after the initial onsale, according to research by Hungary’s largest independent ticketing provider.
“That creates a problem for primary ticketing companies.” said Ethan Dean, Head of Marketing at Nuweb Group. “Once a ticket moves to an unofficial marketplace, they can lose visibility over who owns it, what it was sold for, and whether the eventual buyer will be able to enter the venue.”
Funcode.hu is betting that, given a trusted alternative, customers would prefer to keep resale within the official ticketing system.
The company has launched FunPass, a face-value resale marketplace developed with ticketing technology provider Nuweb Group.
Keeping resale within funcode.hu allows the company and its organiser partners to stay connected to the ticket as it changes hands, preserving visibility over who owns it, how it was transferred and whether it remains valid for entry.
“Unofficial ticket exchange sites in Hungary have been trading tickets for some time” said Barna Jardany, Head Pilot at funcode.hu. “But FunPass is the first official Hungarian ticketing platform to handle secondary sales in-house.”
“That distinction is important because it is the only way for us to guarantee a genuinely safe resale environment. Keeping it in our environment is the only way we can eliminate the risk of invalid inventory, fraudulent sellers or inflated prices.”
“FunPass is for anyone who wants to buy or sell tickets safely, honestly and without tricks or hidden motives. Scalpers and fraudsters will not make money on FunPass, so they will have to take their offers elsewhere.”
FunPass is initially available across six events, including concerts by Pitbull and Deep Purple at Budapest’s MVM Dome and A$AP Rocky at the Budapest Arena.
FunPass will restrict resale prices to the ticket’s original face value. While a percentage-based fee applies to each transaction, sellers can choose whether it is paid by the buyer, the seller, or divided between both parties.
“Fairer resale does not have to come at the expense of commercial value,” said Ethan. “We can curb inflated prices and better protect consumers while still enabling the original ticketing issuer to retain fees, customer engagement, data and trust.”
As more ticketing companies look to add resale to their product suite, many face the same trade off. They can build it in-house and take on the cost and complexity, or work with a third party and lose control of the customer experience.
However, funcode.hu has taken a different route with FunPass, its new official resale marketplace for the Hungarian market.
The platform was developed with Nuweb Group, which already provides much of the underlying technology behind funcode.hu’s ticketing operation.
Whilst Nuweb Group made its resale functionality available to ticketing partners in February, funcode.hu opted for a more customised implementation.
Instead, it used Nuweb’s technology to handle the underlying complexity, while building its own product on top so the discovery experience and user interface remained distinctly funcode.hu.
Customers remain within a funcode.hu controlled experience as they browse, list and purchase tickets.
Even where Nuweb’s technology is processing the transaction in the background, Funcode continues to determine how the service looks, how customers move through it and how authorised resale is positioned in the local market.
“FunPass shows that ticketing platforms can introduce new functionality through a technology partner without ending up with a generic customer experience,” said Ethan.
“With the right partner and an open, API-led approach, ticketing platforms can gain the functionality without giving up control of the product.”