Popular NSW music festival Lost Paradise says it is “doing everything we can” to protect ticket-holders after its US-based ticketing platform suddenly went dark.
Festival organisers are scrambling to understand why major ticketing company Lyte Ticketing — which services international clientele including Coachella, Pitchfork and Electric Forest — has gone offline.
Lyte abruptly stopped operating and shut down its website, which now features a “be back soon” message.
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It states: “Our website is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We should be back shortly.”
The company has laid off its staff and left a number of concert promoters unpaid for hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets sold on the platform, Billboard reports.
Queensland festival Rabbits Eat Lettuce and Lost Paradise were among the Australian events to use the ticketing platform,
Lost Paradise organisers pushed back the sale of festival accommodation to an unconfirmed date as it investigates the issue.
In an update on Tuesday, organisers said they were aware Lyte was still offline and of reports the company had gone under.
“Communication with Lyte’s senior team has not helped us understand exactly what has happened,” they said.“We are taking this situation seriously as we do everything we can to protect and understand the impact this will have on ticket-holders.
“We are looking to have a resolution to share with you soon.”
Organisers said all sales of accommodation upgrades, parking passes and VIP upgrades remained on hold.
“More concrete updates will be released soon,” they said.
“Thank you for your patience and overwhelming enthusiasm for our 10th-anniversary edition.”
Rabbits Eat Lettuce organisers initially said they were unable to contact Lyte for clarification on the “unexpected” outage, but were later told the company had stopped operating.
“We have received correspondence from a Lyte representative, who has advised us Lyte Ticketing has suspended operations, therefore we have made the necessary move to change ticketing providers for REL2025,” Rabbits Eat Lettuce organisers said last week.
“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.”
The festival has since switched back to Humanitix and said all tickets purchased outright through Lyte would be automatically transferred to the Humanitix system and reissued to the same email used through Lyte.
Company chaos
Lyte founder and chief executive Ant Taylor last week confirmed to Billboard he has resigned from the company.
An emergency board is seeking a potential buyer that could repay fans and promoters affected by the shutdown, according to Billboard.
It is unclear how many promoters and ticket-buyers will be affected by the closure.
Billboard reports major festival promoters often had several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ticketing inventory listed on the Lyte system, according to a lawyer representing potentially more than a $1 million in cumulative claims against the ticketing platform.
Lyte clients are reportedly concerned the platform will go into administration without paying its clients any of the revenue from tickets it had sold on their behalf.
For small event organisers, that could equal nearly all of an event’s revenue, according to Billboard.
The outlet reports lawyers for several festival clients hope to pull their clients’ money out of Lyte before it goes into administration.
Lyte was launched in 2014 as a fan-to-fan ticket exchange, where punters could list tickets to events they could not attend and ethically resell them to other interested fans.