Two independent music festivals, Chicago’s North Coast Music Festival and Ohio’s Lost Lands Festival, which had aimed to earn around $70,000 by discreetly reselling VIP tickets through the now-defunct ticketing platform Lyte, are now facing losses exceeding $300,000 each, according to court records. The two festivals are involved in two separate lawsuits — one in New York for North Coast and the other in Los Angeles for Lost Lands. These lawsuits offer the first details about Lyte’s sudden collapse earlier this month.
Lyte’s abrupt shutdown, with no prior warning to its hundreds of clients, revealed that its CEO, Ant Taylor, a Princeton graduate and former media executive, had shifted the company’s business model towards large-scale ticket reselling. Although Lyte was promoted as a peer-to-peer ticket exchange, court documents reveal that much of its revenue came from working with promoters to sell large numbers of VIP tickets at inflated prices, splitting the profits with event organizers.
One court filing shows that of the 3,064 tickets listed for North Coast Music Festival (held Aug. 30 to Sept. 1), only 89 tickets were sold by fans. Lyte used these listings to attract traffic to an additional 2,975 tickets posted by the festival’s promoters, with a face value of roughly $287,750.
Lyte then resold these tickets on its platform, generating $426,912 — a 48% increase, or around $139,162 in added revenue. This amount was to be split equally between Lyte and the festival’s promoters. North Coast Music Festival was set to receive $69,581, which would have been a 24% increase over their expected ticket sales revenue. However, none of this revenue was paid to the North Coast Music Festival, and the festival also didn’t receive the $287,750 it was owed from the ticket sales listed on Lyte.
Similarly, the organizers of Lost Lands Music Festival, claim they are owed $330,000 for tickets sold through Lyte, plus additional revenue from markups. According to their lawsuit (filed under the corporate name APEX Management), Lyte had provided APEX with a $100,000 advance to use the platform, which APEX repaid by early September.
Though much of the Lost Lands lawsuit is heavily redacted, it gives some insight into the timeline of Lyte’s downfall. A court filing states that APEX’s consultant for Lost Lands, concert promoter AEG Presents, learned that Taylor resigned as Lyte’s CEO on September 12, and that the company had halted nearly all its operations and laid off most of its employees, as mentioned by attorney Eric Levinrad in the filing.
Stay tuned for more news!
[H/T] Billboard
