(Hypebot) — Two festivals caught in Lyte collapse deny ticket profiteering and paint a more nuanced picture of why they used the defunct ticket resale platform to move their own tickets.
Festivals caught in Lyte collapse deny ticket profiteering
Chicago’s North Coast Music Festival filed a court action to recover $350,000 in ticket transactions due from Lyte. But according to the fest, the funds were for tickets priced at less than face value to ensure that fans using the secondary market received valid tickets.
Billboard, one of the outlets that broke the original story have since revised it. This Instagram post was provided by the festival:
Ticket dumping
Promoters and festivals sometimes use a strategy called “ticket dumping” to sell unsold tickets at lower prices while still earning some revenue. A third party often facilitates the transactions so the promoter can avoid backlash from fans who paid full price.
While its not clear that is what North Coast was doing, it would at minimum be far different than profiteering by scalping their own tickets at higher prices.
Lost Lands Festival
Lost Lands, who filed a separate lawsuit seeking $330,000 from Lyte, are also pushing back on allegations of profiteering and pledging to make affected fans whole.
While admitting to bypassing their original ticketer to use Lyte, Lost Lands says they were not trying to make more money.
“Lyte had a significant waitlist of people hoping to attend the event, so instead of relaunching tickets on Front Gate,” said Lyte. “We fulfilled a few hundred tickets to this waitlist on LYTE at final tier pricing.”
Here is the full statement Lost Lands statement.
Bruce Houghton
