Tickets.ie liquidation row: “I went to DEAG offices in Berlin,” Barry O’Neill of the Rory Gallagher Festival tells Hot Press

Hot Press has spoken exclusively to Barry O’Neill, the director of the Rory Gallagher Festival – the international music event held annually in the town of Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, in tribute to the revered Irish rock icon. Rory Gallagher was born in the – appropriately named! – Rock Hospital, Ballyshannon, on 2 March 1948.

The future of the Rory Gallagher Festival is in jeopardy after its ticketing agent, tickets.ie ceased trading in June. The ticket-selling company has since entered liquidation, leaving the festival in doubt that it will receive much – if indeed any – of the €283,000 it is owed.

Three Irish festivals – The Rory Gallagher Festival, Rockathon Festival and Cowboys and Heroes – have all stated that their futures are in doubt as a result of being left unpaid by the company behind tickets.ie.

Talking to Hot Press, O’Neill said that he – and the other clients – were unaware of the extent of tickets.ie’s financial troubles or the fact that the underwriting agreement with KMJ was – as revealed by Hot Press – concluded in October 2025, which left the ticketing platform's viability in doubt, and its clients’ money at risk. Not that the latter knew anything about it...

“We never knew they were in trouble,” O’Neill said. “We were totally oblivious. So it was a shock to us."

He describes what was clearly a deeply upsetting – and ultimately harrowing – experience.

“On June 2, we put in our invoices as requested and got an email saying ‘that’s now gone to accounts. Your funds will be with you in two days.’

“At about 1am that night, I happened to go to my laptop to just close down some stuff from doing the invoices that day. I went onto the tickets.ie tab to shut it down and there was a big notification saying it had ceased trading.”

It was a complete bombshell.

Solicitors working for the festival have since contacted the liquidators and put them on notice of the information revealed by Hot Press concerning the background to the liquidation process. As part of the probe, Hot Press contacted DEAG, the German multimedia company that controls Tickets.ie, but received no response.

Barry O'Neill contacted DEAG’s CEO Detlef Kornett, who said the company was not at liberty to respond until the legal process was complete.

COLLECTED IN TRUST
The Rory Gallagher Festival director subsequently met with Irish Minister for Enterprise, Peter Burke, and visited the German Embassy in Dublin. Both said that they could not get involved, as it was an ongoing legal matter. O’Neill then flew to Berlin for a meeting with the Irish Embassy there, before heading to DEAG’s head offices seeking a response.

“I got into the office and I met a nice gentleman and I asked for Detlef Kornett’s secretary Karina Kreugger,” O’Neill said. “She wasn’t available but she spoke to me on the phone.

“I said to her that I was here in Berlin, meeting the Irish Embassy and I decided to come over.

“I wanted to mark a card and say that ‘We’re serious people too. We have people to pay as well. We would’ve paid all of our people only for you guys’.

“She was shocked,” he says. “It seemed to me that she was sort of laughing on the phone. So that was it. I basically heard nothing back. In that state of mind, I started questioning myself, ‘what the fuck am I doing in Berlin?’"

Deutsche Entertainment AG is not a new company.

“These guys have been at the heart of the European entertainment scene for 45 years,” O’Neill said.

“I just think it’s shocking to the core considering what we are,” he added. “We do this just once a year. This major multinational operation that had €500million in turnover last year wants to leave us short of 70% of our income – or something like that. It’s not right.”

The company is currently in the process of liquidation. The high court appointed Dessie Morrow and Diarmaid Guthrie of Azets Ireland as Joint Provisional Liquidators.

They must now find out what has happened to the missing ticket revenues collected in trust by tickets.ie, for independent events. Current estimates suggest that as much as €1.1 million is owing.

“Why would they do this to the memory of Rory Gallagher?” Barry O’Neill asks. "I don’t think they even knew, when they folded the company, that we were a creditor. Now they’re embarrassed that they have folded the company and that they have now discovered in Germany that the Rory Gallagher Festival is a victim – and I believe that's why they answered me."

SEND SOLICITORS LETTERS
Barry is not interested in compromises.

“This company, DEAG, needs to put the money into our bank account,” Barry insists. "Not only have they let down Rory Gallagher, Rory Gallagher fans and The Rory Gallagher Festival, but they’ve let down German music and German heritage.”

Stuart Galbraith, a director of ticket.ie, who owns a 45.3% stake in KMJ, told the High Court in an affidavit that he tried to save the company before putting it into liquidation.

According to a company structure document seen by Hot Press, as of December 2024, KMJ also owns a controlling 55% stake in Singular Artists, the promoter that terminated its deal with tickets.ie in December 2025. Taste of Dublin also withdrew their ticketing business. In a Tickets.ie director’s report, the loss of these two clients is referred to – along with “bad forecasting” – as a cause of the company’s demise.

“This is money that – from our perspective – has been stolen," O’Neill said emotionally.

“The onus is on us. To send solicitors letters every day to the liquidators pointing out what you found out, what Donal MacNamee found out in The Business Post, what I found out in Germany – and the documentation that we provided that shows that our money should have been protected.”

DEAG did not respond to a request for comment.