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Recent Eventbrite hires sued by ticketing rival
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 6 September 2016
So, when Eventbrite boosted its dance music credentials by hiring the founder and CEO of American clubbing-focused ticketing platform Wanttickets.com back in July, what did Wanttickets.com think about all that? I think it’s fair to say it wasn’t impressed.
So much so, it turns out the whole thing went legal last month, with litigation now pending against the two former Wanttickets execs Eventbrite hired, Barak Schurr and Diego Carlin.
According to Wanttickets CFO Richard Blakely, his firm had been in talks to sell to Eventbrite, but the deal fell through. As another buyer was then found for the company, Blakely alleges, it was discovered that Schurr and Carlin had been working for and promoting Eventbrite, even while still being on the Wanttickets payroll. That discovery led to the two execs basically being fired, it’s claimed.
But, as IQ notes, Schurr denies that version of events. He admits that his original conversations with Eventbrite were in relation to the proposal that it buy Wanttickets, but he says that this was because the latter’s then owners had expressed an interest in selling the business. “At no time during this process was I moving business from Wanttickets to Eventbrite”, he adds.
He then argues that the termination of his and Carlin’s contracts with Wanttickets had nothing to do with any alleged misconduct, arguing that they were told by Blakeley himself that the company’s new owners simply wanted to put in their own management. And it was after that development, Shurr goes on, that he and Carlin began speaking to Eventbrite about bringing their dance music expertise to that business.
Commenting on the dispute for their part, an Eventbrite spokesperson told IQ: “Due to pending litigation, I’m unfortunately unable to share any specifics about Barak and Diego, but what I can assure you is that competing fairly is of critical importance and central to our ethics at Eventbrite and we continue to operate as such”.
UPDATE 2PM 6 SEP 2016: Clarification that only Barak Schurr and Diego Carlin, not Eventbrite itself, are currently being sued.
