US ticketing company Lyte ceased operations last week seemingly following disagreements at the top of the business over future direction. Insiders say that the 2022 acquisition of UK ticketing company Festicket, which had fallen into administration, contributed to Lyte’s downfall.
The Ticketing Business quotes one insider claiming that Lyte “went downhill” after the Festicket transaction was completed, with another calling the acquisition “the stupidest deal ever done”. That was partly because the Festicket deal expanded Lyte’s operations so that it started competing with some of its existing partners and clients, plus it ended up saddled with the UK company’s considerable debts and some angry creditors.
Lyte’s core service allowed event promoters to manage ticket reservations and resale, in many ways sitting somewhere between primary and secondary ticketing. Launched in 2014, founder and CEO Ant Taylor raised around $53 million to grow the business. However, like any ticketing start-up, it faced tough competition from existing players, especially Live Nation’s Ticketmaster which has evolved its own services around resale and dynamic pricing.
The Festicket deal expanded Lyte’s geographic reach and its involvement in other parts of the ticketing business. At the time the company said the acquisition would enable Lyte “to offer unique and beloved experiences to fans attending live events across the globe, while building upon our successful partnership integration model with ticketing platforms in the United States”.
Employees at Lyte were reportedly told last week that the company was ceasing activities and product development. Since then the Lyte website has been down, displaying the message “our website is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance, we should be back shortly”.
Taylor has confirmed to Billboard that he has left the business, while an emergency board is reportedly seeking a buyer in a bid to generate money that could repay the promoters and ticket-buyers who have been impacted by the shutdown.
It’s thought a sale of the business was already being considered and that was one of the things that resulted in a disagreement among the top team. If a buyer can be found, then there is still a chance that the Lyte service could return.
If not, it’s not clear how many promoters and ticket-buyers will be impacted. When ticketing companies go down, a key question is whether money related to upcoming events, being held by the ticketing business on behalf of promoters, is shielded from the operations and finances of the wider business.