Lyte Meltdown Continues With Multiple Executive Departures, Reported ‘Quickfire Sale’ Process
Photo Credit: Lyte
Last week, warning signs pointed to major operational trouble for Quincy Jones-backed ticketing platform Lyte. Now, new evidence is continuing to suggest a meltdown at the well-funded Ticketmaster competitor.
DMN first reported on the apparent woes of 11-year-old Lyte six days ago, when, among other things, the business’s website was down. At the time of this writing, that less-than-encouraging issue hadn’t resolved; navigating to Lyte.com brought up a “scheduled maitenance (sic)” message and an indication that the site “should be back shortly.”
To put it mildly, that’s a problem for multiple parties – including the investors who’ve pumped north of $50 million total into Lyte in recent years.
Unfortunately, though, there’s even more to the fallout than potentially lost investments. At a particularly precarious time for many in the live entertainment sector, large and small music events alike “have hundreds (if not thousands) of tickets currently stuck in Lyte’s system with no resolution,” according to Festive Owl.
The same source cited Michigan’s Big Fam Music & Arts Festival, set to kick off on October 4th, as one such event. DMN reached out to Big Fam for comment on the extent of the Lyte-related turmoil but didn’t immediately receive a response.
Not helping the situation is the seeming radio silence from Lyte, the founder and CEO of which, Antony Taylor, departed the company last month, according to his LinkedIn profile. Once again at the time of writing, Taylor didn’t appear to have publicly elaborated on the precise circumstances surrounding his departure.
Predictably, a closer look at the LinkedIn profiles of other (now-former) Lyte higher-ups shows that Taylor isn’t alone in exiting the company.
These September (not August) departures include but aren’t limited to head of sales Chandler Abbott, head of commercial for APAC Tim Glenane, and operations director Jeanette Savell. Furthermore, in what was in retrospect a far-from-positive sign, execs like Lyte president Andy Donner had stepped away earlier in 2024.
Shifting the focus back to the present, TheTicketingBusiness today described an already-underway “quickfire sale” process for Lyte and the assets at hand. This bankruptcy alternative will reportedly field closed offers until October 11th.
Ironically, as some will recall, it was only about two years ago that Lyte itself scooped up the distressed assets of Festicket and Event Genius. (TicketingBusiness noted Lyte employees’ belief that the multimillion-dollar deal was a mistake and marked the start of the purchasing company’s decline.)
The developments underscore the stiff competition in the live arena and especially ticketing. Most obviously, that refers to Live Nation’s Ticketmaster.
But CTS Eventim’s See Tickets, Tixr, DICE (which could be exploring a sale of its own), TickPick (now boasting $250 million in investor capital), Seat Unique, OPEN (formerly GET Protocol), and StubHub (evidently still delaying its long-awaited IPO) are also hunting for bigger pieces of the ticketing pie.
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