Ticket Rocket assets unsold

Number-crunchers in charge of salvaging the remains of defunct ticket company Ticket Rocket are still struggling with the terrible state of the company’s books.

The prospect of a payout for unsecured creditors is getting bleaker, as those now in charge are unable to find a buyer for arguably the company’s most valuable asset.

Fortress Information Systems, trading as Ticket Rocket and previously known as TicketDirect, was placed into receivership and liquidation in 2020.

Associated companies Dash Group and Dash Tickets New Zealand were also placed in receivership.

The company’s troubles first came to light after a swathe of events were cancelled or postponed amid the coronavirus lockdown in April and May 2020, and requests for refunds surged.

Palmerston North City Council successfully had $676,000 of Fortress’ funds frozen in June 2020 over fears money owed from large events would not be paid.

The company tried to have the freezing order suppressed, but a High Court judge said it was in the public interest for it to be out in the open.

A flood of stories of theatre companies, sports teams and the Royal New Zealand Ballet having issues with Ticket Rocket rolled into the receiverships and liquidation.

Documents filed to the Companies Office in November 2020 showed the Fortress and Dash collective owed more than $9 million.

Bank of New Zealand subsequently, and successfully, applied to the High Court to get Ticket Rocket owner Matthew Davey to pay $3.85m due to guarantees he made in relation to Ticket Rocket.

The bank then applied to have bankruptcy proceedings initiated, something it needed High Court permission for as Davey was based overseas.

According to documents uploaded to the Companies Office in May, there remains one asset of value left to sell – the company’s ticket platform software code.

There was just one problem – no-one was keen to buy it.

‘‘Despite our best efforts with interested parties, no offers were received,’’ the reports said.

The companies’ books have been a big issue for receivers, both in terms of completeness and accuracy.

There were also intercompany loans to consider.

The companies still owed Bank of New Zealand $5.5m, while people owed money for tickets were collectively out of pocket by $1.64m.

Those people were recommended to ask their banks for chargebacks.

Davey did not show up on insolvency registers in New Zealand or Australia, where he was living at the time BNZ got its High Court application accepted.