Tickets.ie collapsed owing festival organisers €1.4m days after their events

Oshi Software Limited, the Irish company behind the Tickets.ie platform founded in 2004, decided on 2 June 2026 to cease trading immediately — days after a June bank holiday weekend of festivals whose ticket money it was holding. About 34 event organisers are owed roughly €1.4 million. The Rory Gallagher International Tribute Festival in Ballyshannon, which drew 10,500 attendees, says a €283,000 invoice went unpaid; Total Country, running the Cowboys and Heroes festival, is owed €136,000; Event Ready cannot secure more than €180,000 from its Rockathon festival.

The collapse came four years after an earlier rescue. After mounting losses, Oshi entered the Scarp process in 2022, and the majority of its shares were bought for €300 by UK-based My Ticket Services Limited, owned by Germany's Deutsche Entertainment AG, which also lent €174,700 and provided €100,000 of working capital. Founder John O'Neill stayed as chief executive until March 2025.

Director Stuart Galbraith's affidavit says outside advice in early 2025 found the company balance-sheet insolvent but cash-flow solvent; by late 2025 it had lost two large clients. Cash flow held until May 2026, when an old €94,000 invoice arrived and the growth of last-minute ticket sales forced Oshi to pay organisers in ever-shorter windows. The provisional liquidators urged AIB not to set off a €571,768 overdraft against a €1.047 million sum in Oshi's trading account, which three festivals argue is ticket proceeds held on trust for organisers, not an Oshi asset.

The company kept trading after advice in early 2025 that it was balance-sheet insolvent, relying on cash flow that depended on organisers' money.

Ticket-sale proceeds sat in Oshi's own trading account next to its overdraft, with no separation from the company's general funds.

It chose to cease trading immediately after the June bank holiday festivals, the moment organisers' payables and supplier bills came due.

This was the second failure in four years for a platform whose new owners recorded record €490m group sales at parent level.

Ticket money belongs to the events until they happen: a platform that spends organisers' proceeds as working capital converts its own insolvency into theirs.

Liquidators Diarmuid Guthrie and Dessie Morrow of Azets are urgently investigating the legal status of the €1.047m trading-account credit, the conduct of the directors and when the company became insolvent. Organisers have turned to fundraising — nearly €50,000 for the Rory Gallagher festival — while O'Neill has an active case against Oshi before the Workplace Relations Commission.