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Ultra Europe vs. Ultra Music Miami
The promoters of Ultra Europe claim to have been tricked into various licensing agreements by Worldwide Entertainment Group, the promoters of Ultra Music Festival Miami.
– Ultra Music Festival Croatia 2013
In a federal complaint filed by Adria MM Productions Ltd. on April 28, the Croatia-based promoter claims Worldwide Entertainment Group made a believable case that it owned the “Ultra Europe” brand.
Based on this understanding, AMM entered into a five-year licensing agreement “to pay the defendant licensing and promotional fees for the use of its proprietary marks in Europe,” as Courthouse News reports.
Other demands made by Worldwide Entertainment included the payment of advances, “exclusive approval of vendors, prohibitively expensive staffing arrangements, luxury travel arrangements and additional promotional fees,” according to the complaint.
All of this made AMM lose money even though Ultra Europe had been successful in Croatia since its launch in 2013, the promoter claims.
The first edition in Split’s Stadium Poljud attracted some 100,000 people over two days. Attendance surpassed 150,000 by 2016, when the festival had expanded to a week. After the 2016 edition, AMM says it was presented with a new five-year license agreement containing “unreasonable and financially devastating terms,” which it refused to agree to.
According to the complaint, attempts to renegotiate with Worldwide Entertainment Group failed, because the promoter responded by “immediately cutting off AMM’s access to social media channels (…), disabling AMM’s email accounts used to promote the Ultra Europe in 2017,” thereby “revoking AMM’s rights to promote the festival in 2017.”
On March 3, AMM received a “notice of default,” in which Worldwide Entertainment Group claimed that is was AMM who had breached the agreement.
It was then that AMM says it discovered that Ultra didn’t have any rights the “Ultra Europe” brand.
The company is therefore “seeking compensatory damages on claims of fraud in the inducement, fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and tortuous interference with a business relationship,” Courthouse News reported.
Pollstar was informed that the organizers of Ultra Music Festival Miami have filed their counter claim over the weekend, May 5-7, and this story will be updated accordingly.