In a twist that’s left festival-goers and organisers alike scratching their heads, Lyte Ticketing has suddenly gone dark. The US-based company, which promised to revolutionise the ticketing industry, has seemingly vanished into thin air, leaving a trail of questions and potentially worthless tickets in its wake.
With major events like Coachella, Lost Paradise, and Rabbits Eat Lettuce relying on its services, this sudden shutdown has rightfully caused a few meltdowns through the festival scene.
What is Lyte Ticketing?
Lyte Ticketing, which launched in 2014, aimed to shake up the ticketing industry by providing a fan-to-fan ticket exchange platform. It allowed punters to list tickets to events they couldn’t attend and resell them ethically.
The platform has serviced major events like Coachella, Pitchfork, Electric Forest, and Australian festivals including Lost Paradise and Rabbits Eat Lettuce.
However, recent lawsuits filed by two seperate music festivals, have pulled back the curtain on Lyte’s operations, revealing major shadiness. Instead of just facilitating fan exchanges, Lyte’s main revenue came from working directly with promoters to resell large quantities of VIP tickets at inflated prices.
Promoters would hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of premium tickets to Lyte, which then sold them at marked-up rates, splitting the profits. So essentially, the final boss in the game of scalping.
Where did Lyte Ticketing go?
Last week, Lyte Ticketing abruptly ceased operations, with its founder and chief executive Ant Taylor resigning from the company.
The Lyte website just has a vague “be back soon” message that quite literally gives nothing. Billboard reports that the company has laid off its staff and left concert promoters unpaid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tickets sold on the platform.
Major festival promoters often have several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ticketing inventory listed on ticketing systems like Lyte. Billboard reports that Lyte clients are concerned the platform will go into administration without paying its clients what they’re owed from the tickets sold on their behalf. For smaller events, this could mean losing nearly all their revenue.
Which Australian festivals have been affected by Lyte Ticketing disappearing?
Queensland’s Rabbits Eat Lettuce and New South Wales‘ Lost Paradise are among the Australian events caught up in this ticketing mess.
Lost Paradise organisers stated, “Communication with Lyte’s senior team has not helped us understand exactly what has happened.” So basically, go off, give us nothing!
Organisers do want to assure festival goers that they “are taking this situation seriously”. Lost Paradise said they will do, “everything we can to protect [festival attendees] and understand the impact this will have on ticket-holders”.
All sales of accommodation upgrades, parking passes and VIP upgrades for Lost Paradise remain on hold. “More concrete updates will be released soon.”
Rabbits Eat Lettuce has already switched back to Humanitix. All tickets and “glamping items” will be transferred to the new ticketing system and any payments made on incomplete payment plans will “be honoured 100 per cent”.
“We apologise for this inconvenience Lyte has caused, and will be working to ensure a smooth transition with all existing tickets transferring to the new provider,” Rabbits Eat Lettuce organisers said last week.
What Should You Do?
If you’re holding Lyte tickets, keep an eye out for updates from your festival organisers. They’re clearly working as hard as they can to resolve this situation, whilst being ghosted.
In the meantime, I think we should start to consider more traditional ticketing methods for future events like fighting to the death in lines outside box offices. Just a thought.
Lead image: Lyte Ticketing/ Canva
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