Festicket administrators offer six-month update

Festicket administrators have provided an update six months after the festival package company fell into trouble last year. 

Administrators said that across this period, they had received communication from roughly 40 event promoters asserting the implied terms of their contracts with Festicket are such that the net proceeds from ticket sales were to be held in trust by Festicket, for those event promoters.

However, the report said: “Our understanding is that the company did not segregate or ringfence any assets for the benefit of specific parties. We also understand that the value of promoter claims could be impacted by chargebacks made by customers after the date of our appointment, for example where a customer obtains a refund from their credit card provider for the tickets they purchased.”

The report added that trust claims are a complex area of law and that it had been necessary to seek an order from the Court. This was to “provide relief in relation to certain elements of our costs in the event that the trust claims are successful to the extent that a Court orders such costs are to be drawn from monies found to be held in trust”. This is known as a ‘Berkeley Applegate’ order.

A hearing last month saw a Judge confirm that ‘Berkeley Applegate’ relief was appropriate for certain aspects of administrator’s costs, solicitor’s costs and disbursements. The Judge will also take primary responsibility for making decisions regarding the validity of the trust claims received, and administrators are still awaiting the final Order from the Court.

The Court is putting in place a process to assess the validity of the trust claims and may need to establish further processes to identify funds held for these particular trusts.

The report added: “In the event that some trust claims are found to be valid, it is by no means certain that this will extend to all those promoters claiming trust status, as the nature of their claims vary…

“We anticipate the process to assess the validity of trust claims by the Court will take some time but we hope to be in a position to provide an update to creditors in our next progress report.”

Festicket filed a moratorium in August last year, hinting at post-pandemic troubles with an attempt to come up with a rescue plan.

The company then fell into administration in September, before being acquired by event technology platform Lyte.

In October, it was revealed that Festicket owed more than £22.5m (€25m/$28m) at the time of its collapse.