A number of clubs, promoters and festivals face incurring huge financial losses following the collapse of UK ticketing company Festicket.
The platform – which large events such as Primavera Sound, Amsterdam Dance Event and Tomorrowland use to sell tickets – entered a moratorium period in August which gave it just 20 days to find alternative funding to save the company. That period has now come to an end with no such deal having been found, meaning many promoters with money tied up in the company may never receive it and the organisation is at serious risk of being placed into administration.
Many promoters who’ve worked with Festicket have said they are continuing to keep an eye on the situation and that some money is filtering through from the company still, but Bristol club Motion has said it is yet to receive funds from the company for recent events. Motion has used Festicket and another company called Ticket Arena as its main ticketing partners over the last six years.
"Our event partners and Motion are owed in excess of £300,000 due to not receiving payments for tickets sold through their platforms," representatives of the club said in the statement. "Last weekend, we had an event which sold out at 3000 tickets, the promoter still hasn’t received all of their ticket funds for the event."
Motion’s statement added that these funds are "vital" for covering staff wages, artist fees and other expenses in putting events. The situation, Motion said, is currently "leaving promoters and venues out of pocket."
Festicket, which describes itself as "the world’s largest platform for discovering and booking festival trips," sells travel packages for events across the UK, Europe, the US and in other regions. It’s yet to release a statement on the matter to its partners or publicly.
