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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now we move to this news that an Irish music festival could lose 135,000 because the online platform tickets.ie is entering liquidation. Tickets.ie is or was Ireland's largest independent ticketing company handling tickets for thousands of music and arts and comedy events annually.
Cowboys and Heroes festival organiser Simon Power is on the line. Good morning Simon.
Good morning Clare, thanks for having me on.
Probably not a good morning for you is it? What's happened?
Chapter 2: What led to the collapse of Tickets.ie and its impact on festivals?
It's been an incredibly tough couple of days. It was a very successful weekend. We had a fabulous time, great feedback, fantastic crowds. And I was looking forward to just drawing down the funds from Tickets.ie. I went to log on the portal and there was a notice put up instead saying that the company was planning on appointing a liquidator. It was an incredible gut punch.
You know, it's just 135,000 euros, slightly over 135,000 euros owing and no notice. Nobody reached out to me. It was literally just the change of website was what notified me of this.
So can you absorb that or are you waiting to pay people, artists and other suppliers who were there over the weekend in County Leitrim?
Yeah, so look, I've made the absolute decision and I'm committed to no matter what happens, everybody's going to get paid. Our reputation is really important and all our suppliers. are incredibly important to us. So we're going to get everyone paid, whatever it takes. It might take a little bit longer than normally, but whatever we need to sell up.
But it's absolutely going to set us back a few years.
So have you accepted that you're not going to get that money back?
No, no, absolutely not. I'm battling.
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Chapter 3: How did Simon Power react to the news of Tickets.ie entering liquidation?
I think it's just incredibly cynical. To give you context, about 40% of our sales happen in the last, Ireland's the very last minute country when it comes to ticket sales. 40% of our sales happen within just two or three weeks before the festival. You know, tickets that I obviously weren't in a great position financially but didn't have any transparency about that.
They took large amounts of sales, not just from our festival, but believe it or not, there was three festivals on the same weekend that were with tickets that I ate. So the real figure, our figure is 135,000 plus. The real figure is more like over half a million.
If you include all of the other festivals as well.
If you include the other two festivals. Now I'm in touch with the other festival organisers and they're absolutely and utterly devastated as well. We're fortunate in some ways in that we had other sources of revenue, not just exclusively from ticket sales. And we had our own outlets as well. But it is beyond a gut punch.
You know, it's just it seems so cynical that they allowed all the festivals to happen, continued selling tickets right up until, say, the Friday before the festival, the Friday of the festival. And then on the Monday, that's when they decided to pull the rug. And basically, we've no idea where the money is. I would argue it was not their money. You know what I mean?
The money that they collected from ticket sales after their fees is something that should have been in escrow and not touched by them.
So it should have been in a client account waiting there for you when you went to collect it. Now, customers who have tickets for upcoming events, and Simon, obviously, you're out of pocket now, but...
customers who bought tickets with tickets.ie for other things that are happening in the near future are told by the website in that statement that they should wait to hear from the relevant event promoter directly regarding their event. So there will be other organisers who are put in very difficult positions now as a result of this.
Yeah, well, I mean, at least in our case, our customers got to experience the festival and look, it's also out of pocket. But they're saying, approach your promoter, when it's them that have the funds. It's going to be incredibly difficult for promoters to put on any kind of show when they know in advance they're not going to receive the funds from Ticket Study.
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