{"id":102033,"date":"2024-09-23T18:03:53","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T22:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/09\/23\/two-festivals-file-lawsuit-against-collapsed-ticketing-company-lyte\/"},"modified":"2024-09-23T18:03:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T22:03:53","slug":"two-festivals-file-lawsuit-against-collapsed-ticketing-company-lyte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/09\/23\/two-festivals-file-lawsuit-against-collapsed-ticketing-company-lyte\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Festivals File Lawsuit Against Collapsed Ticketing Company\u00a0Lyte"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tTwo independent music festivals that had hoped to generate approximately $70,000 in revenue by quietly scalping their VIP tickets through the since-shuttered ticketing company Lyte now each face more than $300,000 in losses, court records show.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lyte<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tTicketing Company Lyte Shuts Down\u00a0Suddenly\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tThe festivals are represented in two lawsuits \u2014 one filed by organizers of Chicago\u2019s North Coast Music Festival in New York court and the other, Ohio\u2019s Lost Lands Festival in Los Angeles court. The suits provide the first insights into the collapse of Lyte, which suddenly ceased operating earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sudden closure of the company, without any warning to its hundreds of clients, revealed that Lyte CEO Ant Taylor<\/strong>, a Princeton graduate and former media executive, had quietly shifted the business into large-scale ticket scalping in recent years. Lyte was marketed to the public as a fan-to-fan ticket exchange, but documents from recent lawsuits show that Lyte\u2019s main source of revenue came from working directly with promoters to scalp hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2019 worth of VIP tickets for their events to Lyte, which would then resell those tickets at large markups, splitting the upside between the promoter and itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to one court document, of the 3,064 tickets listed on Lyte for the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago (Aug. 30-Sept. 1) only 89 tickets came from fan listings. Lyte would use those fan listings to drive traffic to an additional 2,975 tickets posted directly on Lyte by the event\u2019s promoters, with a collective face value of approximately $287,750.<\/p>\n

\n\tLyte was able to scalp those tickets on its own marketplace and generate $426,912 in revenue \u2014 a price lift of nearly 48%, or approximately $139,162 total \u2014 which it would then split 50-50 with the promoters. North Coast Music Festival\u2019s cut of the action was to be $69,581, which represents a 24% increase in revenue over their original allocation.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut none of the above mentioned revenue was paid to the dance-centric NCMF festival and the festival was also never paid back for the $287,750 in revenue from tickets it listed on Lyte.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team behind Lost Lands Music Festival, which takes place each September in Legend Valley, Ohio says its owed $330,000 for the tickets it sold on Lyte, plus the upside it generated from the markups. According to the Lost Land\u2019s lawsuit (filed under its corporate name of APEX Management), Lyte paid APEX a $100,000 advanced fee for using the ticketing platform, which APEX repaid by early September.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of Lost Land\u2019s lawsuit is heavily redacted, although the suit does provide some clues about the timeline surrounding Lyte\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to a court filing, APEX\u2019s consultant for Lost Lands, concert giant AEG Presents, had learned that Taylor had resigned as Lyte\u2019s CEO on Sept. 12, and \u201cthat Lyte had ceased virtually all of its business operations and laid off virtually all of its employees,\u201d attorney Eric Levinrad<\/strong> writes in a recent court filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuits states that two days later, officials with AEG made contact with Lyte\u2019s CFO Lisa Bashi<\/strong> and learned \u201cshe could not commit to the timing of any payment or even that there would be a payment,\u201d for money owed to Lost Lands. \u201cMs. Bashi further stated that this was an unfortunate scenario, and that defendant was hiring an outside company to help consult on how to wind down operations (Id.), making it clear that Defendant had become insolvent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lyte<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tLyte Ditches \u2018No Refunds\u2019 With Returnable Ticket\u00a0Feature\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tOn Sept. 18, an LA Superior Court judge overseeing the Lost Lands case approved the festival organizers\u2019 request for a writ of attachment, allowing organizers to seize Lyte\u2019s property before a judgment is entered, ensuring that Lyte\u2019s assets are available to pay Lost Lands the $330,000 it is owed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe failed payments come with significant risk for festivals, managing director of APEX Event Management Brett Abel<\/strong> said in a declaration filed in LA court, writing, \u201cAPEX will have to urgently find alternative sources of revenue to pay the vendors and artists who will be working at the festival, to make up for its planned share of the secondary market ticket sales,\u201d increasing the risk that APEX would \u201csuffer a loss from the festival rather than break even or to make some profit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two independent music festivals that had hoped to generate approximately $70,000 in revenue by quietly scalping their VIP tickets through the since-shuttered ticketing company Lyte now each face more than $300,000 in losses, court records show. Related Ticketing Company Lyte Shuts Down\u00a0Suddenly 09\/17\/2024 The festivals are represented in two lawsuits \u2014 one filed by organizers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}