Quicket has been our ticketing partner since we realised that paper tickets no longer worked, and found some other cool kids with radical ideas in ticketing and a willingness to try new things. We’ve all grown up together – through the awkward teenage years into the fine organisations that you now know, love and trust. We’ve been working together with Quicket for 13 years now, and Quicket is now one of the biggest South African ticket platform businesses, as well as the ticketing engine for a number of regional Burns around the world, in part due to all the hard work we’ve put in together to build a ticketing system that works specifically for Burners.

Recently, AfrikaBurn was informed that Quicket had changed its shareholding and sold a majority stake in its business to Ticketmaster, who are a part of Live Nation Entertainment. 

Much like everyone else in our community, we had some initial concerns to Quicket’s shareholding changing and how it might affect our working relationship. So, we met and sat with the Quicket crew, and are happy to report that everything still seems the same as it was before, and looks like it will be the same for a long time. 

We asked Quicket:

• Will there be any changes to security?, protection, storage and usage of data, fraud?
• Will their fees stay the same? Commission fee, contracting etc?
• Will there be any future involvement in ticketing pricing from TicketMaster?
• Will there be any changes to the Quicket system? Good or Bad?

And they answered:

• “Everyone (including those Quicketeers who go to the Burn) wants their personal data to be protected, and used only for the purpose that it was intentionally given for. Information gathered for ticketing is data that will still be stored in Quicket’s servers, and processed in accordance with Quicket’s privacy policy, in line with POPIA and GDPR. As we become part of a global ticketing ecosystem, we are expected to adhere to even higher standards in respect of data security and privacy. This is good for everyone.”
• “Quicket is willing to contractually commit to the same fees that we have always charged for as long a period as Afrikaburn would like to commit. Fees are as low as we can possibly make them, and are there to facilitate the many costs that we incur in processing payments and providing the supporting services to the Burn community.”
• “Ticket prices are set by Afrikaburn, and will remain that way for as long as Afrikaburn chooses to work with Quicket for ticketing.”
• “The Quicket system is continually being built, fixed, upgraded and tested by our development team. Ticketmaster has decades of research in ticketing technology which Quicket will be able to learn from. In the coming years, we will look at how we can build in some of the advanced functionality of the Ticketmaster system that we don’t yet have ourselves.”

They also said:
“Afrikaburn is part of Quicket’s DNA. Together we figured out the dusty details where technology, creativity and desert meet, and have supported each other in this incredible journey. As Quicket, we now have the opportunity to join an incredible group of ticketing minds bringing new ideas and technology, with the same passion for ticketing and a connection to the global community. We are the same team as before, working toward the same dream of providing Africa with the best ticketing technology the world has to offer. We just got one step closer towards realising that dream, and are excited to share it with the Afrikaburn community and the rest of the continent.”

We can’t begrudge Quicket growing their business, and we trust that as Burners they will grow Quicket in the best, most fair and equitable way. They’re not just our ticketing partners, they’re also a part of the artists and creatives who brought the Mealie sculpture to Tankwa Town last year. For this next event cycle, we’re definitely going to be using Quicket as our partner, and will keep close contact with them to make sure that our working relationship is of benefit to our whole community.

Where AfrikaBurn intersects with products and services in the default world, there will always be a tension, which is why we drafted an ‘Ethical Supplier Policy’ ages ago that encourages us to use your hard earned ticket money in the most ethical and responsible way. 

Ticketing has always been a challenge for AfrikaBurn’s aspiration to live in a decommodified world, and we often get questions about why we don’t just go back to printing our own paper tickets. There are a number of reasons for this …

1. AfrikaBurn is not in the business of spending your money to build ticketing platforms, we’re in the business of building Tankwa Town and creating art.
2. We want our participants to trust that after travelling thousands of kilometres, when they turn up in Tankwa Town that they’ll be able to get in. AfrikaBurn needed a quality ticketing partner who would take the risk in developing a safe and reliable ticketing platform just for our event.
3. Quicket are the small team we know from Cape Town, who spend the entire event at Die Hek (when they are not building Scallywag Saloon’s) supporting our crew to check everyone in. Did you know it can take up to 9 hours to get into Burning Man? Quicket also volunteers at Die Hek and has had a huge hand in making sure your check-in to Tankwa Town is quick and easy.
4. Scammers exploited our decommodification resistance to name ‘Quicket’ as our ticketing partner, and in 2022 we saw a huge rise in people being ripped off and made a decision to always say ‘Only get your tickets from Quicket and not any other platform’. This has saved hundreds of people from being scammed.
5. There is not one other ticketing platform available to us (that we know of) that offers the security and functionality that Quicket does in South Africa. Yes there are some fancy new NFT platforms, but they don’t like ZAR and they certainly don’t come for free.