Ticket service owes money to arts groups
Dozens of Bay Area organizations and ticket buyers are part of a growing list of unhappy customers around the country claiming they’re being “stiffed” by Brown Paper Tickets, the ticket-management service known for supporting independent venues and presenters.
The complaints, which peaked after the pandemic caused mass cancellations of inperson events, have resulted in a lawsuit that claims the Seattle company owes more than $ 6.75 million to customers across the country.
Over the past eight months, Brown Paper Tickets has left a long trail of unpaid debts for tickets sold through the service. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court against Brown Paper Tickets on Sept. 30 after numerous complaints were filed against the company with the Better Business Bureau Northwest + Pacific and the state.
The company has not yet filed a response to the suit and has gone months without contacting its customers, organizations owed money told The Chronicle.
In March, Brown Paper Tickets founder and President William Jordan told the Associated Press that the company had to shut down all outgoing payments to deal with pandemicinduced chaos.
“We lost control over which payments were able to clear and which weren’t,” Jordan said. “And we managed to piss off everybody.”
After repeated inquiries from The Chronicle, the company replied with a statement that offered no details about a payment plan.
“This is a long process with thousands of events cancelled, postponed, or abandoned, and we are unable to offer an estimated timeline at this moment,” Brown Paper Tickets said.
The Washington attorney general’s suit seeks restitution for event producers and ticket buyers. Two Seattle law firms filed two legal actions against the company in August — one is a classaction suit on behalf of ticket buyers, and the other petitions the King County court to appoint a general receiver to seize the company’s assets on behalf of event producers.
While the company’s apparent cash flow crisis worsened with event cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic, numerous organizations report that the company started delaying or retracting payments even before shelterinplace orders began in midMarch.
Brown Paper Tickets, which has been in operation since 2000, handles ticket sales for event producers and takes a fee before passing the revenue it collects to event organizers. But organizations across the Bay Area are fuming about what they say is a lack of transparency and say that the company appears to still be offering tickets for sale even as payments have been stalled.
“If you go to their regular website, everything looks fine and dandy,” said Allison Page, director of the San Francisco theater company Killing My Lobster, which says it is owed about $ 6,500 from a March event. “That fills me with rage. People are going to get suckered into hosting their virtual events via Brown Paper Tickets. They have no idea what they’re walking into.”
Comedian and Kung Pao Kosher Comedy show producer Lisa Geduldig said she had already deposited a check from Brown Paper Tickets in midMarch when she got an email informing her that the check had been recalled. Before she had a chance to contact her bank, the check bounced. Like hundreds of other presenters and ticket buyers, she filed a complaint with Better Business Bureau Northwest & Pacific and the Washington attorney general’s office.
“A couple of weeks later I got an email
saying that the AG office contacted Brown Paper Tickets and didn’t hear back, so my case is closed,” Geduldig said. “It’s so frustrating.”
On Friday, Nov. 6, the King County Superior Court is scheduled to hold a hearing to appoint a receiver for the company. Once a receiver is in place, anyone owed money can file a claim. Whether Brown Paper Tickets can make good on all the debts remains to be seen.
Tina Marchetti, the executive director of Sonoma’s Occidental Center for the Arts, said she was so upset with Brown Paper Tickets’ lack of communication that she launched a Facebook group called Stiffed By Brown Paper Tickets in May. The page quickly garnered dozens of complaints, starting with her own account of the ticket service withholding about $ 9,700 for concerts that the center presented last winter.
Brown Paper Tickets isn’t the only lowfee ticketing service in the competitive market geared toward small and independent presenters, but none presented itself more as an ally for all the scrappy folks who want to put on a show. On its website, the company describes itself as “the socially conscious leader for ticketing and event registration. … We are you. Ticket buyers. Event organizers. Music, film, gadget lovers. Artists, theater patrons, geeks, sports enthusiasts.” The company’s appeal also centered on its low fees and readily accessible staff.
Jon Rosen of San Francisco’s Landmark Musical Theatre has used Brown Paper Tickets for two or three productions a year since he founded the itinerant company in 2016. He said that competitor Eventbrite had a better website and competitive service fees, but unlike Brown Paper Tickets, it didn’t offer phone support for ticket sales.
“As a theater company that mostly focuses on oldfashioned musicals and not on cuttingedge stuff, our audiences skew older,” Rosen said. “Brown Paper Tickets was the only company that had an 800 number that would process ticket orders on the phone, and that’s 15% to 20% of our audience.”
Rosen had cultivated close ties with some top Brown Paper Tickets customer service representatives, including its director of client success, Sten Iverson. When the company recalled the check for Landmark’s February production of “Urinetown” at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco, he contacted Iverson. After numerous unanswered phone messages and vague emails, Rosen said Landmark is still owed $ 6,800.
The Chronicle could not reach Iverson for comment.
Another presenter awaiting payment is Sonoma County Roller Derby, an organization founded by Jerry Seltzer, a cofounder of BASS Tickets and former Ticketmaster vice president who had done sales outreach for Brown Paper Tickets before he died in July 2019. The allfemale league unsuccessfully tried to collect $ 2,550 in proceeds from events hosted in February and March. When a promised check didn’t show up, Sonoma County Roller Derby Chief Financial Officer Kris Olmstead was told by Brown Paper Tickets that the check had been canceled due to COVID19.
“I feel like they’re hiding behind that excuse,” Olmstead said. “I believe there are systemic financial issues exacerbated by all of the event cancellations. What’s alarming is that they continue to add new events and put new organizers at risk. We were able to pay our vendors out of pocket and absorb that cost. Other producers have lost a lot more.”