Ticketfly can try to recover lost funds, judge rules

A judge has allowed Ticketfly Canada to try to recover funds it lost after the Pemberton Music Festival was cancelled and its producers filed for bankruptcy last year.

In 2017, the festival was scrapped after it was revealed the event had lost $47 million over three years and was not sustainable.

After the event’s producers — Pemberton Music Festival Limited Partnership (PMFLP) — filed for bankruptcy and Ernst & Young named the trustee, ticket holders were told to seek refunds through their credit card companies.

The credit card companies then paid out the ticket holders and charged the cost of the tickets back to Ticketfly, leaving them with “chargebacks” to the tune of $7.9 million.

Ticketfly then applied to the trustee to recover its costs but was rejected twice based on the trustee’s claim that Ticketfly had signed an agreement with Huka Entertainment to be the exclusive ticket vendor, not PMFLP.

Huka Entertainment was contracted by the PMFLP to organize and produce the festival.

In a B.C. Supreme Court judgment dated Aug. 3, Justice Nitya Iyer set aside a previous decision that said the trustee was permitted to reject Ticketfly’s claims, since the producers had previously told Ticketfly to remit to the PMFLP any revenue collected through advanced ticket sales.

Iyer pointed out that PMFLP could not deflect to Huka when it came to Ticketfly’s claim but also be entitled to the revenue the ticketing vendor had collected before ticket sales were halted.

Ticketfly, which was the exclusive vendor for the festival, will have until Aug. 31 to hand in documents detailing each ticket holder’s purchase and financial institution that processed the refund in pursuit of its claim. It remains to be seen what amount will be paid back to Ticketfly.