Photo Credit: Zac Schulze Gang (Rory Gallagher Festival)
Irish lawmakers are looking into offering governmental support after the collapse of Tickets.ie devastates the country’s live music industry.
Tickets.ie was Ireland’s largest independent ticketing company, handling ticketing for thousands of live events each year since 2004. But last week, the service abruptly shut down, leaving some organizers unable to access revenue from recently concluded festivals. Now, lawmakers in the country are looking into what support the government might be able to provide to help organizers withstand the financial headwinds.
“We’re going to have a look at [gaps in the regulatory environment] in connection with this, because we want to ensure that maximum protections are afforded to client monies being held by any organization,” said Enterprise Minister Peter Burke, who announced that his department would investigate the matter.
“I know this is clearly in the process of a liquidation, where the rules are very clear in terms of the action the liquidator will take in terms of preferential creditors, and how that process is worked through,” Burke continued. “And obviously, you have the court action going on in the background. I have asked my department to investigate what we can do and what support we can have in this regard, but I don’t want to make false promises.”
Burke added that a “substantial budget” for festivals has already been committed to in the budget, but that he is not unsympathetic to the organizers that now find themselves caught up in the fallout of Tickets.ie’s shutdown.
The liquidation of the ticketing service has had a devastating impact on several festivals, including the not-for-profit Rory Gallagher International Tribute Festival, whose organizers say they are facing a potential deficit of €283,000. Similarly, a country music festival said it was owed €135,000 since the Tickets.ie liquidation began.
“They are precisely the events that rural and small towns in Ireland need, and they are the groups that are now left out of pocket,” said TD Ken O’Flynn, who echoed the sentiment that the shutdown had caused great distress in communities and volunteer organizations across Ireland.
Tickets.ie was founded in 2004 and handled ticketing for thousands of music, arts, comedy, educational, family, and sporting events in Ireland each year as the country’s largest independent ticketing service. In 2022, German live entertainment group DEAG acquired a majority stake in the company. On June 4, the service was abruptly shuttered, with many customers learning the news via the company’s announcement on its website.