Features
Tickepoint Searches For Bogus Promoter
The ticket company that sold most of the tickets for a bogus
Ticketpoint sold 8,000 tickets for Bucharest Rock Arena (May 30-31), which had been billed as “the Romanian Woodstock,” before realising the event wouldn’t happen.
“I think they left the country some time ago,” said Ticketpoint general manager Andrei Tuturuga, although he doubts the fraudsters made any money out of their scam.
Once the Israel-based bogus promoters suspected they’d been rumbled, they returned the euro 10,000 Ticketpoint had already advanced to them.
“I don’t understand why they did that, unless they felt returning the money would be enough to deter us from chasing them,” Tuturuga explained.
The promoters operated a company called Playcool SRL, which was set up March 16 with one shareholder and founding capital of 200 Lei (about $63).
However, having marketed the tickets, sold them, and refunded the money, Tuturuga’s company is keen to recover another euro 10,000 ($13,310) to cover costs and has reported the matter to the police.
Ticketpoint has refunded all the ticket money it collected. It stopped selling when Guido Janssens of Emag!c, which promotes the 3-year-old B’Estfest in Bucharest (July 1-5), was alarmed to check the festival’s Web site and discover it was asking fans to vote for the acts they wanted to see. It printed a list that included Pink Floyd, U2 and AC/DC.
He said he was convinced AC/DC wouldn’t visit Romania in 2009 because he knew rival promoters had made unsuccessful attempts to book the band.
Cristi Busuioc of One Events, who had been appointed to book the local acts that would support the international headliners, released a statement on Realitatea, the Romanian news television network, that said he’s also considering suing his former partners at Playcool.