Festivals seek liquidation of Tickets.ie after collapse leaves more than €1.1m in debts

The Rory Gallagher International Festival takes place in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.

A trio of festivals directly impacted by the collapse of online vendor Tickets.ie have applied to place the site in liquidation on a third-party basis.

Simon Power, the organiser of the Cowboys and Heroes festival in Leitrim, said that the grouping had applied for audit consultants Azets Ireland to be appointed as liquidator of the now-defunct site.

Tickets.ie ceased trading suddenly last week with its directors — UK-based Stuart Galbraith and German native Detlef Kornett, chairman of Deutsche Entertainment AG, which acquired a majority stake in Tickets.ie in 2022 — claiming that they would appoint a liquidator for the company in due course.

The site had been operational since 2004 and formerly held the online ticketing licence for GAA fixtures.

More recently, it had been primarily involved with selling tickets for homegrown festivals.

When the site shut down on June 3, it left a number of Irish festivals in limbo regarding money due to them from tickets sold for their events, which had recently concluded for the year.

The Cowboys and Heroes country music festival, together with Donegal’s Rory Gallagher International Festival, and Rockathon in Co Meath, were amongst the biggest operators tied to the ticketing agent.

It is understood that Tickets.ie ceased trading with more than €1.1m in debts to concerns, including those festivals outstanding.

Mr Power, whose own firm is owed roughly €135,000 as a result of the collapse of Tickets.ie, criticised the timing of the move to shutter the business.

“They waited until after three festivals finished, and then they pulled the plug,” he said.

“Even if they’d told us a month in advance, we could’ve saved 40% of our sales with local sellers,” he said. 

He said that while his own company remains solvent, he is unsure if it will be able to go ahead next year after two years’ profits were wiped out by the liquidation.

“We’ve got an order now without their involvement, which puts us in the driving seat. The liquidator will go through the accounts and find out where the money went,” Mr Power added.

The Dáil heard on Thursday that the liquidation had had a “devastating impact” on Irish festivals, with Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty describing the losses facing the Rory Gallagher festival in his own county as representing “literally wipe-out territory”.

Responding, enterprise minister Peter Burke said he was constrained in what he could say on foot of the High Court action, but said he wanted to see the events affected survive.