Online ticketing platform Lyte appears to have gone out of business, according to a report from Billboard.
The company has now shut down its website and laid off its staff, with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of outstanding payments owed to several promoters, Billboard reports.
Lyte founder and chief executive Ant Taylor confirmed to Billboard on Tuesday that he has resigned from the company, and Lyte’s website has been offline since late last week, currently displaying an “undergoing scheduled maintenance” message.
An emergency board and creditors are now working to find a potential buyer who could repay fans and promoters affected by the surprise shutdown, which has left promoters feeling “ghosted,” according to Billboard.
Upon its launch in 2014, Lyte was billed as an “ethical” resale platform where fans could sell tickets to events they could no longer attend directly to other fans. However, the company’s clients allege that its business model had since changed, instead helping promoters scalp their tickets at higher prices.
An attorney representing upwards of $1 million in cumulative claims against Lyte told Billboard that it wasn’t uncommon for major independent festival promoters to have several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ticket inventory listed on the platform.
Events that used Lyte as their primary ticketing platform could now lose nearly all of their ticket revenue if the company goes under before paying its clients. However, attorneys for several of Lyte’s clients hope to recover outstanding payments before the company goes into administration.
“It would be totally unacceptable if any of my clients’ money was co-mingled with Lyte’s operational funds,” one attorney told Billboard. “If that happened, the board of directors will be forced to account for those funds, even if that means piercing the corporate veil and going after their ability to raise money.”
Lyte raised close to $53 million in four major funding rounds, according to Billboard. Its high-profile clients included Newport Folk Festival, Baja Beach Festival, and Lost Lands, in addition to other dance music events like Chicago’s North Coast Music Festival and Australia’s Lost Paradise. It remains unclear which events are owed money by Lyte.
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