{"id":542343,"date":"2026-07-10T07:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T07:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542343\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T07:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T07:18:15","slug":"failed-ticket-sales-platform-tickets-ie-owes-e1-4m-to-event-organisers-high-court-told-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542343\/","title":{"rendered":"Failed ticket sales platform Tickets.ie owes \u20ac1.4m to event organisers, High Court told \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 34 event organisers are said to be owed some \u20ac1.4 million from the company behind an internationally-backed Irish ticket sales platform that collapsed last month.<\/p>\n

Liquidators appointed to Oshi Software Limited, trading as Tickets.ie<\/a>, have said in a report to the High Court<\/a> that they are urgently investigating the legal status of a \u20ac1 million sum in Oshi\u2019s trading account, which organisers of three independent music festivals argue is held on trust for them and other events. <\/p>\n

Diarmuid Guthrie and Dessie Morrow of Azets<\/a> said they will also focus their inquiry as liquidators on the conduct of the directors, the reasons the company failed, and when the company became insolvent.<\/p>\n

Among the event organisers out of pocket are three that successfully petitioned the High Court for the liquidators\u2019 appointments after Oshi announced it ceased trading just after their June bank holiday festivals.<\/p>\n

The Rory Gallagher<\/a> International Tribute Festival, held each year in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, alleges its recent \u20ac283,000 invoice to Tickets.ie<\/a> went unpaid. Its organiser, Barry O\u2019Neill, told The Irish Times he was \u201clying on the floor crying\u201d after discovering the ticket provider stopped trading in the days after the voluntarily-run festival ended in a \u201cblaze of glory\u201d with 10,500 attendees, about half of whom travel from overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole life was turned upside down … We would owe over \u20ac200,000 to suppliers, artists, production companies, hire companies, marquee suppliers. These are people we should have been paying three or four days after the festival,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Total Country Limited, which runs the annual Cowboys and Heroes country music festival in Co Leitrim, claims it is owed \u20ac136,000 in ticket sale revenue. Event organiser Simon Power said the Tickets.ie<\/a> collapse is \u201can absolute punch in the gut\u201d. With all of the profits lost, the organisation has no capital to move forward, he said.<\/p>\n

Event Ready Limited told the High Court it has been unable to secure the proceeds from more than \u20ac180,000 worth of tickets sold for its Rockathon festival in Co Meath. <\/p>\n

As provisional liquidators, Guthrie and Morrow wrote to AIB urging the bank in the \u201cstrongest possible terms\u201d not to use the \u20ac1.047 million sum in Oshi\u2019s trading account to set off a \u20ac571,768 overdraft on another of the company\u2019s accounts while they figure out the nature of the trading account credit.<\/p>\n

The petitioning companies, represented by Gibney Hogan solicitors and barrister Ross Gorman, claim this money does not belong to Oshi, but is simply ticket sale proceeds held by it in a fiduciary capacity on behalf of event organisers. They argue this money should not form part of the assets available for distribution among Oshi\u2019s general body of creditors.<\/p>\n

The liquidators told the court they are reserving their position on this element of the petitioners\u2019 claim. They noted Oshi owes roughly 34 event organisers in the region of \u20ac1.4 million. Many of these creditors are independent and community-based so may not be able to sustain such significant financial losses, the liquidators said.<\/p>\n

The Irish-based ticketing company, founded in 2004 by John O\u2019Neill, has run into financial difficulty before. After mounting losses, the company entered a Small Companies Administrative Rescue Process (Scarp) in 2022 that led to the majority of its shares being purchased for \u20ac300 by UK-based My Ticket Services Limited, which also provided a \u20ac174,700 loan and \u20ac100,000 working capital. <\/p>\n

My Ticket Services Limited is owned by Deutsche Entertainment AG (DEAG). DEAG, which is publicly listed in Germany, recorded record group sales of \u20ac490 million last year, according to accounts. <\/p>\n

Oshi founder John O\u2019Neill remained as a director and chief executive of Oshi until March 2025 and held 24.94 per cent of its shares at the time of the liquidation. The liquidators noted O\u2019Neill has an active case against Oshi before the Workplace Relations Commission.<\/p>\n

The new owners could not turn it around, according to Oshi directors Stuart Galbraith, based in London, England, and Detlef Kornett, with an address in Brandenburg, Germany, who are both also directors of My Ticket Services.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0German-owned online agent Tickets.ie faces liquidation after ceasing tradingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In an affidavit, Galbraith said the directors tried to ensure the company\u2019s survival for four years and hoped it would return to profitability. However, in early 2025, concerned about Oshi\u2019s finances, they sought outside advice and were told it was at that point balance-sheet insolvent but cash-flow solvent.<\/p>\n

By the end of that year, Galbraith said, Oshi lost two large clients: Taste of Dublin festival and Singular Artists, which is backed by DEAG and lists Galbraith as a director. <\/p>\n

Oshi continued to be cash-flow solvent until May 2026, said Galbraith. An old \u20ac94,000 invoice arrived out of the blue, while the increasing predominance of events where tickets were sold at the last minute put a strain on cash flow as Oshi was required to pay organisers within an unexpectedly short time frame, he said.<\/p>\n

On June 2nd the company board decided to cease trading immediately. The directors moved to begin liquidation proceedings but were then served with the event organisers\u2019 winding-up documents. <\/p>\n

Simon Power told The Irish Times the Cowboys and Heroes festival brings about 9,000 people from the US, UK and \u201cevery corner of Ireland\u201d to Leitrim each year.<\/p>\n

He said he promised suppliers they will be paid, and he has nearly completed all of those payments. \u201cIt is none of our suppliers\u2019 faults at all and they deserve to be paid … But I\u2019m not prepared to take the hit on this, because it is too much money. It is not okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he views his company and the other two petitioners as \u201cvictims\u201d who are working together to secure justice.<\/p>\n

Barry O\u2019Neill, organiser of the Rory Gallagher festival, said he is hopeful the liquidators will find that the \u20ac1 million trading account sum is not an Oshi asset and that festival organisers can get a substantial amount of money back. <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe do everything by the book. We are volunteers doing something for Irish iconic hero Rory Gallagher, keeping his name in lights … It is not what we have lost now, but what culture will lose in not having the Rory Gallagher festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly \u20ac50,000 had been donated via a fundraising portal for the Rory Gallagher festival, while more than \u20ac7,000 has been raised for the Rockathon festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 34 event organisers are said to be owed some \u20ac1.4 million from the company behind an internationally-backed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[207900,93,73,61,60,135021],"class_list":["post-542343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-azets-ireland","tag-entertainment","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rory-gallagher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}