The Tortuga Music Festival owners filed suit against concert ticket company Ticketfly on Wednesday (Nov. 29) over a contract dispute, the Tennessean reports. The three-day festival takes place on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale over three days in April, and is set to be headlined in 2018 by Florida Georgia Line, Eric Church, and Keith Urban.
Ticketfly claims to be the contract holder for ticketing for the popular Florida country festival which attracted 100,000 fans earlier this year. Ticketfly threatened litigation, so the festival’s owner, TMF2013, preemptively sued in Nashville federal court. TMF2013 is owned by Rock the Ocean.
Rock the Ocean maintains in its filing that Ticketfly’s deal was with Huka, the production company behind the festival. There is no such contract between Ticketfly and Rock the Ocean. Ticketfly is a subsidiary of Eventbrite. The company, which is popular with independent promoters, was purchased earlier this year after previously being owned by Pandora. The lawsuit also claims that Huka and Ticketfly shared a common executive, Jeff Kreinik, who worked at Huka until 2014 and then at Ticketfly until 2016.
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Hollabaugh, a staff writer at MusicRow magazine, has over 20 years of music business experience and has written for publications including American Profile, CMA Close Up, Nashville Arts And Entertainment, The Boot and Country Weekly. She has a Broadcast Journalism and Speech Communication degree from Texas Christian University, (go Horned Frogs), and welcomes your feedback or story ideas at lhollabaugh@musicrow.com.View Author Profile
