Complaints about Brown Paper Tickets continue to roll in

Event organizers in the Madison area and beyond are still trying to get thousands of dollars from the ticketing company.

Brown Paper Tickets (BPT) paid thousands of dollars it owed to several Madison venues, artists, and event organizers in July 2023, after Tone Madison reported that the popular online ticketing service was withholding payouts of customers’ shares of ticket sales for months and, in some cases, for years. Local organizations including Atlas Improv Co., Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL), and the newly launched Dirt Camp Festival told Tone Madison that BPT offered little to no responses to their complaints. In a pattern that seems to be taking place all over the country, BPT did pay out to specific customers that reporters asked about. 

Since Tone Madison published that story in July, more people have reached out complaining that Brown Paper Tickets owes them money and isn’t communicating well. A few are in the Madison area, but these additional complaints are coming from all over the country—a sign that Brown Paper Tickets’ payout backlog is still having a widespread effect, and that customers are still desperate for answers. 

About 50 miles southwest of Madison in Mineral Point, the Theatre of Ballet Arts is still waiting for Brown Paper Tickets to fork over proceeds from a December 2022 production of The Nutcracker. “Any attempt to reach Brown Paper Tickets has received an auto response, but no monies have been forthcoming,” says Summer Hamille, Artistic Director at the small non-profit ballet company.

Since its founding in 2000, the Seattle-based Brown Paper Tickets has become a go-to ticketing option, especially among small and independent event organizers. BPT’s low service charges, simple interface, and charitable donation options have earned it the image of a welcome alternative to the ever-more-dominant Live Nation and its fee-frenzied Ticketmaster service. Music promoters, community theater groups, non-profits hosting fundraiser events, improv comedy companies, wrestling promoters, and all sorts of other folks have come to rely on BPT.

This also means BPT’s customers tend to be the sorts of organizations who can least afford to wait on an overdue payout.

“BPT owes us $3,018—which is a paltry sum to many, but is crucial to us because we’re so tiny,” Hamille says.

More recently, long-running independent video store Four Star Video used Brown Paper Tickets to sell tickets for a benefit screening of the documentary Kim’s Video in October at Arts + Literature Laboratory. Four Star co-owner Lewis Peterson says the store is still waiting for its share of proceeds. (Full disclosure: Peterson also frequently writes about film for Tone Madison.)

“I sent an inquiry through the submission form on their website [in late October] and so far have heard nothing from them,” Peterson says. This is a common experience: BPT’s website says its customer support phone number is “temporarily unavailable,” and customers around the country have reported getting little or no responses to email inquiries.

“Doing events is kind of an every-once-in-a-while thing for us, so it’s not like it’s affected our normal cash flow, but of course it’s pretty irritating to not have any idea when the funds are going to come through, as our margins as a business are pretty thin,” Peterson says. “This is the first time we’ve done anything through Brown Paper Tickets, which we used because the event was at Arts + Literature Laboratory and they had used them before. We actually set up our account with them just a few days before your initial article [on July 19].”

Arts + Literature Laboratory received perhaps the biggest delayed BPT payouts of any customer in the Madison area—more than $19,000, all told. ALL founder Jolynne Roorda says the nonprofit venue/gallery/arts education center has been looking for an alternative.

“We haven’t found a perfect or even a good solution for ticketing so far, and this is frustrating for an organization of our size that wants to keep costs down for audiences and make it user-friendly for both buyers and staff,” Roorda says.

A group of residents in the Madison suburb of McFarland put on an annual play to raise money for the McFarland Food Pantry. This past February, they staged a run of Neil Simon’s Rumors in McFarland High School’s theater space and sold tickets through BPT. Brooke Hauser, one of the performers and organizers, says she’s been trying to get ahold of about $7,300 from BPT ever since.

Over the summer, Hauser says she “finally got ahold of a human at Events.com,” an executive, “who said he would straighten this out for us.” But since then, she says, communication has gone cold.

“We presented a check to the McFarland Food Pantry after all receipts were in for the show, and then Brown Paper Tickets failed to get us the money we raised,” Hauser says. “It would have been disappointing enough were the money just for our group, but the funds were promised in full to the McFarland Food Pantry who was counting on the funds we raised.” 

The theatrical fundraiser for the McFarland Food Pantry got started back in 2015, and will continue in February 2024 with a production of Almost, Maine by John Cariani. In an email, Hauser tells Tone Madison, “I have not yet decided how we will handle the ticketing, but it will certainly NOT be Brown Paper Tickets!”

In January, the No Name Bar in Winona, Minnesota (formerly Ed’s No Name Bar) hosted a sold-out show from beloved folk-blues musician Charlie Parr, selling advanced tickets through BPT. Co-owner Cynthia Knouft was one of the first out-of-towners to reach out in the wake of Tone Madison‘s July story about BPT. Knouft says the No Name Bar is still waiting on about $2,000, and still hasn’t heard anything in response to emails to the company or a complaint Knouft filed with the Better Business Bureau.

“We are a small independently owned venue (capacity 170) and $2,000 is quite a bit of money for us,” Knouft says. “This year has been a particularly tough year for business in our area as wages are stagnant and costs keep increasing.”

Knouft has switched over to selling tickets through Eventbrite for the time being. “Their processing fees are quite high and they require a small fee to sell but we receive payment immediately,” she says.

Jilted BPT customers from further afield have also been reaching out to Tone Madison. Phil Denny, a Lansing, Michigan-based jazz musician, says the company owes him nearly $24,000. Megan Passmore, who manages a community radio station called KDNK in Carbondale, Colorado, is waiting for more than $9,000 in proceeds from a 40th anniversary fundraiser party it threw in April. Robin Fox, a Southern California promoter who focuses on tribute bands, is at her wits’ end trying to recoup about $4,000 from BPT. “This non-payment has caused me hardship and I don’t know how much longer I will be able to continue my business,” Fox says.

Even in just the past six months, media outlets around the country have reported on more instances of BPT holding out on customers and ignoring inquiries. Several arts groups in Philadelphia, theater companies in the DC area, high-school theater productions in Georgia. In Medford, Oregon, a local credit union launched a fundraising effort this November to help out a non-profit that is waiting on about $15,000 from BPT.

Most of the news reports about the BPT debacle have been local newspapers and TV stations focusing on individual cases or a handful of cases in their regions. In a lot of instances, press inquiries for these stories have shamed BPT into paying up for the customers reporters ask about. This spotlights the crucial role of local news outlets. It also means BPT is largely facing piecemeal, case-by-case accountability for a widespread problem. With the exception of trade publications like Playbill and Digital Music News, there hasn’t been much coverage that tackles the national scope of the BPT payment backlog.

After the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the live entertainment industry in spring 2020, customers across the country began to complain that BPT wasn’t refunding their tickets for canceled events, and event organizers started to report delays in payouts. In the fall of 2020, the State of Washington sued Brown Paper Tickets, and the company agreed in a 2021 settlement to pay $9 million to frustrated customers around the country.

Events.com, an online events platform based in San Diego, announced in October 2022 that it would be acquiring Brown Paper Tickets. It’s now acknowledging the backlog for what appears to be the first time. On November 25, BPT sent out an email blast to customers stating that Events.com was close to finalizing the sale and that BPT would make customers whole as a condition of the sale.

“Under the asset purchase agreement, any remaining impacted event organizers will receive final payments between January 25th and March 31st, 2024,” one part of the statement read. The statement also says Events.com is taking steps to ensure quicker payouts and better support for Brown Paper Tickets customers.

Events.com and BPT representatives have not responded to a request for comment for this story.