A little more than a year after digital ticketing company Tixserve formally launched in London, the startup has raised €250,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland and has struck a deal with Tickets.ie to use its platform in Ireland.

The inspiration for Tixserve came when founder Pat Kirby and his co-founder son James Kirby (pictured) were turned away from a concert as their tickets showed up as fake when scanned. The Kirbys were annoyed that sports events and concerts depending on printed paper tickets, instead of embracing new technology, was leaving the way open to duplication and fraud.

They saw no reason why, with airlines and others already well into adopting digital platforms and mobile boarding passes or the equivalent, such major crowd events could not also do so, and so protect fans from fraudulent touts.

Research in the US and UK led to working with the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers programme at Maynooth University and the Midlands Innovation and Research Centre of the Athlone Institute of Technology.

Tixserve is designed to function with existing ticket infrastructure and scanning technology. It delivers a track-and-trace ticketing system that simultaneously offers a major marketing tool for ticket sellers to generate further revenues from merchandise sales and other services. At the same time the system allows rights owners to decide themselves whether tickets can be exchanged or resold within the secure Tixserve ecosystem.

In Association with

In effect the top half of the Tixserve digital ticket allows entry to an event, while the lower half functions as a mobile commerce platform. No envelopes or stamps are involved, just downloading an app to a mobile device.

The deal with Tickets.ie, which specialises in selling tickets for stadiums such as Croke Park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh, along with theatres, music and arts events, means that more than three million old paper tickets will soon go digital. 

Tim Chambers, formerly of Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, was recently appointed chairman of Tixserve.