Sector · Events & live experience

Event technology.

Software and apps for festivals, trade fairs, conferences, sports and cultural events. From ticketing and cashless wristbands to visitor apps, exhibitor portals and crew operations: bespoke development that suits how your event really runs.

SectorEvents & live
Real-timeYes, peak-proof
AudienceVisitors + crew
Implementationa few sprints
ApproachSprint-based
ComplianceGDPR, PSD2, RI&E

What falls under event technology?

Under the heading of event technology, we mean all the digital layers that keep a live event running — before, during and after the event. Think of online ticket sales with QR or NFC access, a visitor app with programme and wayfinding, cashless payments via a wristband, an exhibitor portal for sponsors and stallholders, and a crew app for the operational side. Around these sit integrations with your CRM, membership administration, point-of-sale system and PSP, and a layer for analytics and post-event reporting.

The event tech market is mature, both in the Netherlands and internationally. For commodity events, a standard platform such as Eventbrite, Cvent or Bizzabo is perfectly adequate — just as an association with a few hundred members can often manage well with Ticketkantoor or a combination of Mollie and Mailchimp. We come into the picture once the standard package starts to constrain you: a festival with multiple stages and its own brand experience, a trade fair with B2B matchmaking, a sports club orchestrating home matches and season tickets, or a venue operator wanting a white-label solution across multiple events. Our app development and payment integrations form the two main focus areas in this.

In practice the choice is rarely "off-the-shelf or custom". More often you end up with a hybrid: ticket sales on an existing point-of-sale system, with a custom visitor app and cashless wallet on top, and behind the scenes an integration with the CRM so marketing and sales can carry on with clean data after the event. We start from that end picture, deciding what truly needs to be custom and what should stay with Eventbrite or Paylogic, and build only the parts that make your event distinctive.

For venue operators, this distinction matters even more: an arena, theatre or exhibition hall leases its spaces to dozens of different organisers each year. It then pays to set up one robust platform in which each tenant keeps its own brand, payment flow and visitor data, while you as the operator capture the operational economies of scale. For festival and concert organisers, the emphasis tends to lie more on the visitor brand: the app must feel like part of the festival, not a derivative of something generic.

8
Layers that typically come together in an event stack
~80 ms
Scan latency that visitors will tolerate at entry
3-peak
Traffic peaks (opening, doors, headliner) per day
100%
Offline fallback required on crew and scanning devices

When custom development beats a standard platform?

01
Industry-specific

Sport, cultural or niche conference

A football club has home matches, season tickets, business suites and youth clinics, which a conference platform doesn't cover. A dance or theatre company wants season subscriptions linked to single-ticket sales, and a marathon organiser wants to keep participants, finishers and supporters in one app.

02
Multi-event brand

Own brand experience across multiple events

A festival organiser with three editions, a trade fair company running several trade shows, or a venue hosting a hundred shows a year wants one visitor account, one wallet and one visitor history. Not a separate Eventbrite page per event and data scattered across ten tools.

03
Niche features

B2B matchmaking or trade fairs

Professional conferences run on AI matchmaking, badge scanning, lead retrieval and a sponsor lead flow into the CRM. Standard platforms provide a shell — for deeper flows and better lead quality, custom development is often quicker and cheaper than stitching together ten separate tools.

04
Integration

Deep integration with CRM and POS

When your own CRM, point-of-sale system, membership administration and marketing stack are central, it is smarter to connect the event platform to them than to force things the other way round. This also prevents data from having to be cleaned up again for your marketing team after every edition.

Three layers that always come back.

Layer 01

Access and payments

Online ticket sales, QR or NFC access, fraud prevention, resale, a cashless wallet on a wristband and on-site POS integration. This is the commercial heart of the platform, and nothing can falter at peak moments. Scanning devices must work offline, payments must go through even when the network drops, and the refund flow for leftover balances must be easy for visitors to use.

Layer 02

Visitor experience

The visitor app: programme, wayfinding, push notifications, ordering food and drinks, networking and social features. This is where you turn a "fun event" into "I'll be back next year". A well-built app also yields valuable data on visitor behaviour: which stages draw crowds, which food stall sells out, where bottlenecks form, so the next edition can be laid out more effectively.

Layer 03

Operations

Crew rostering, briefings, stewards' app, logistics and slot booking, permit tracking, an emergency app and risk assessments (RI&E). We often build this layer on a field-service app architecture: robust, offline-first and made for people working in the field. The crew receives tasks and briefings through a single timeline on their phones or ruggedised tablets, while head office sees in real time who is where and what has been ticked off.

Eight concrete building blocks.

Examples of what we build for clients in the events industry, from a simple visitor app to a deeply integrated cashless system.

Ticketing & resale

Online sales, QR tickets, a secondary marketplace and anti-fraud.

NFC wristbands

Access, cashless payments and zone control in a single band.

Visitor app

Programme, wayfinding, push notifications and social features.

BLE wayfinding

Indoor navigation with beacons or an AR overlay.

Exhibitor portal

Lead capture, badge scanning and booth bookings for exhibitors.

Cashless POS

Wallet system with Apple Pay, PIN, cash and token coins.

Crew & safety

Rostering, a stewards' app and an emergency flow linked to the risk assessment and evaluation (RI&E).

Post-event analytics

Surveys, photo gallery, lead reporting and a visitor behaviour dashboard.

Where our clients in the events world are.

Festival & live

Festival and concert organisers

Multi-day festivals, stage tours, dance, pop and jazz events. Market names such as Lowlands, ADE or North Sea Jazz, where wristbands, multi-stage programmes, cashless payments and a fast visitor flow form the heart of the operation. Often the brand is just as important as the technology: the app must feel like part of the event, not a generic shell.

Trade fairs & conferences

MICE, trade fairs and B2B conferences

Trade fair organisers and business conferences with exhibitor portals, badge scanning, AI matchmaking and sponsor lead lists. Often hybrid, with both a live and an online component. The value here lies in the data: exhibitors want quality leads, speakers want reach, and the organiser wants to be able to show per edition what it delivered.

Sport, culture & venues

Sports clubs, theatres and venue operators

Eredivisie clubs with home matches and season tickets, theatres and dance venues with subscriptions, and venue operators such as large arenas and music halls handling hundreds of events a year. Here everything hinges on repeat visits: once a visitor is linked to an account, every subsequent visit should flow smoothly.

Target groups we often build for.

A
Festival

Festival and dance organisers

Multi-day festivals with cashless wristbands, multi-stage programming and a strong social layer. We often build the custom visitor app and cashless wallet and integrate them with an existing ticketing partner.

B
Conference & MICE

B2B conference and trade fair organisers

Trade fairs and industry conferences with an exhibitor portal, matchmaking and lead retrieval. Integration with exhibitors' and sponsors' CRM systems is decisive here.

C
Sport

Professional clubs and sporting events

Eredivisie clubs with home matches, marathons and running events, and federation-run tournaments. Access, season passes and participant apps in one environment, integrated with membership administration and point-of-sale systems in the stadium.

D
Cultural

Theatres, concert halls and festivals

Cultural institutions with subscriptions, single performances and education programmes. Often integrated with grant accountability and visitor research.

E
Corporate

Corporate events and kick-offs

Partner events, international kick-offs and awards shows for large employers. The focus here is on a polished attendee app and a seamless on-site experience for guests.

F
Venue

Venue operators and stadiums

Arenas, music venues, exhibition halls and sports stadiums hosting dozens to hundreds of events a year. White-label platforms on which each tenant keeps its own brand, payments and attendee data.

Compliance: how we handle regulation.

Domain 01

GDPR and attendee data

Attendee registration, wristband tracking, BLE wayfinding and social features collect personal data. We build in consent management, data minimisation and retention from sprint one. For youth events we take extra account of the GDPR's rules on children's data. Right-to-erasure and data-export requests are handled automatically, so your team doesn't have to chase them by hand.

Domain 02

PSD2 and cashless payments

Cashless wristbands and point-of-sale integrations fall under PSD2 and form a regulated payments domain. We work with payment service provider integrations such as Mollie, Adyen, CCV or Buckaroo, and automate settlement with exhibitors and food and beverage stalls. For refund flows of remaining balances, we build an audit trail so that bookkeeping stays aligned.

Domain 03

Safety and permits

Risk assessments (RI&E), emergency procedures, permit tracking and steward workflows are legally anchored at large events. An emergency app lets you send a message to all crew within seconds, and connects to the site map, first-aid posts and the emergency services. For AI features (programme recommendations, matchmaking), we take the AI Act and DSA into account.

Frequently asked questions.

Do you replace Eventbrite, Cvent or Bizzabo?
Not for commodity events. A standard package is faster and cheaper for straightforward ticket sales. We only build custom software when the standard platform starts to constrain you: sector-specific flows (sport, culture), multi-event brands, B2B matchmaking at a trade fair, or a deep integration with your own CRM and point-of-sale system. If you are building resale, secondary markets or a structured auction format for scarce tickets, that borders on our work on an auction platform or marketplace platform. Standard platforms and custom software often run side by side: the wallet and visitor app custom-built, the ticket box office on an existing system.
NFC wristbands or QR codes for access and payments?
QR works well for access alone and is cheaper to distribute. An NFC wristband pays off once you also want cashless payments, zone control and social features. After the first scan the attendee does nothing more, and queue times at bars and entrances visibly drop. For sporting events and theatres, QR plus contactless card payment is often enough. For festivals and dance events, an NFC band with a cashless wallet is the standard recipe.
How does a cashless event work in practice?
Visitors link their wristband to an account in advance and load a balance, or do so on the spot at a top-up kiosk. At the bar or food stall, the wristband is scanned and the order is recorded directly on their account. After the event, visitors get their remaining balance back through a refund flow. For organisers, this means shorter queues, a real-time view of revenue per stage and stand, and hard data for the next edition. We integrate the system with your payment platform and payment service provider so that settlement with exhibitors runs fully automatically.
Can you also set up hybrid and virtual events?
Yes. For hybrid and fully virtual events, we build live streaming, Q&A flows, breakout rooms and AI-driven matchmaking for networking. We usually work with an existing streaming layer (Vimeo, Mux, Agora) and build the attendee app, ticketing and sponsor features around it. Crucially, attendees should never feel they've moved to a "second page" when switching between live and online: everything runs through one account, one agenda and one wallet.
How do you handle GDPR when it comes to attendee tracking and wristband data?
Working in a GDPR-compliant way at events is mainly a matter of clear legal bases and data minimisation. Wristband tracking and BLE wayfinding are permissible provided attendees are informed and actively opt in to features that involve personal data (such as programme recommendations, social features and networking). We design transparent consent flows, limit data storage to what is needed for the event and payments, and build in retention policies and the right to erasure from sprint one. For events aimed at young people, we also take the UK's Children's Code (AADC) into account, and for payment data, PSD2.
What does a bespoke event platform cost?
It depends heavily on scope. A simple visitor app with a programme and push notifications is a considerably smaller project than a full cashless platform with wristband integration, point-of-sale integration, an exhibitor portal and a crew app. We work in sprints and, after a short planning phase, provide a concrete proposal based on your requirements, target audience and existing systems. We often start with one layer (ticketing, app or cashless) and expand per edition. This keeps the risk manageable and lets the platform grow alongside your event.
How do you deal with peak load on opening day?
Event software stands or falls on the few peak hours around doors opening and the headline act. We scale the backend horizontally, run the scanning app offline-first with later synchronisation, and carry out a load test beforehand with realistic peaks. Crew devices get their own cache and keep working if the network drops, with settlement with the payment service provider following once the connection returns. For stadiums and arenas, we also build a fallback flow so that gate control never fails completely. That difference between a good event and a disaster almost always lies in the robustness of that fallback layer.
Can you connect to our existing ticketing provider?
Yes. We don't automatically replace what already works well. Ticketing providers such as Paylogic, See Tickets, Ticketmaster, Eventbrite or a Dutch point-of-sale system now offer fairly mature APIs, to which we can connect our attendee app, wallet or crew layer. This keeps scope and risk small: the complex ticketing and fraud layer stays with the specialist, while the attendee-facing brand and the on-site experience are tailored to you. If the existing provider can't keep pace with your ambitions, migration may become an option, but that is a later step and not a prerequisite.
Do you also work with wristband suppliers such as Intellitix or Connect&GO?
Yes. The hardware side of cashless events (wristbands, scan units and top-up kiosks) is a market with a handful of specialist suppliers, including Intellitix, Connect&GO, Token Cashless, Playpass and Festicket. We rarely build the hardware ourselves. Instead, we integrate our app, wallet and back office with it. Which supplier suits you best depends on scale, location and any existing contracts. We're happy to help you make that choice during the selection phase.
What does a typical project with you look like?
We start with a short discovery phase: shadowing your team, mapping the systems currently in use, identifying the bottlenecks from previous editions and pinpointing which elements must truly set the event apart. We then plan sprints with measurable deliverables, such as a working ticketing flow, a first app version and a wallet prototype, and test early with an internal crew or a small group of visitors. In the run-up to the event, we carry out a load test, a dress rehearsal and a go/no-go decision. After the event, we deliver an evaluation based on data from the app, wallet and POS, so that the next edition can be planned with greater precision.
Do you also build hardware integrations with POS and scanning systems?
Yes. For cashless payments, we integrate with payment service providers such as Mollie, Adyen, CCV and Buckaroo, and with payment terminals from CCV, Pay., Worldline or similar. For entry, we work with QR scanners from standard ticketing providers or with the NFC readers supplied by your wristband vendor. On the food and beverage side, integrations with POS systems such as Untill, Lightspeed and Lessor are common. In that landscape, we see ourselves as the partner that stitches the separate pieces together into one visitor experience, rather than the partner that reinvents every hardware layer.

Talk to us about your event technology.

A thirty-minute introductory conversation in which we review the layers you currently have, where things are causing friction, and which combination of standard platform and bespoke development will deliver the most value for your event.

Response within 1 working day
No-obligation conversation
Westerdoksdijk 599, Amsterdam

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