10 People Getting Royally Screwed By The SFXE Bankruptcy
The fallout from this week's SFX bankruptcy filing is just starting with promoters exploring buybacks and staffers planning their exits. In addition to companies who sold to SFX but are still waiting for payment, are dozens of small and medium sized business that must absorb major losses.
By Dave Brooks from touring industry trade Amplify
SFX filed for bankruptcy Monday, defaulting on $300 million in debt to over 40 unsecured creditors. You can read the entire filing here. Below we look at some of the people and companies who are getting pinched by the bankruptcy and are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars by the EDM giant.
10. CrowdRX
Amount owed: $269,603
The medical triage team that provided onsite services for SFX events like TomorrowWorld, Mysteryland, Electric Zoo and Sensation is owed over a quarter million dollars in unpaid bills.
9. Front Gate Ticketing
Amount owed: $300,000
Hope this wasn’t upfront money!
8. Joe Rascoff
Amount owed: $360,000
The former Live Entertainment chairman stepped down last January and is owed a six-figure severance, despite remaining on the board of directors.
7. American Express
Amount owed: $450,000
Someone please take away Sillerman’s Amex!
6. VistaJet
Amount owned: $1 million
Remember that picture of Sillerman exiting a private jet and flipping the camera off before grabbing his junk and making an angry face? Vista Jet baby! SFX owes the private jet charter service over a million bucks.
5. Lucas King and Jeff Callahan
Amount owed: $5.8 million
In 2014, King and Callahan sold their Chicago-based promoter company to Sillerman and is still owed millions of dollars. It was King and Callahan that triggered an SFX default last month after SFX missed a $3 million earnout payment. Read the SEC filing on the transaction here.
4. Paolo Moreno
Amount owed: $7 million
Less than a week ago, former Disco Donnie manager Paola Moreno, his brother Gabriel and artist manager Lawrence Finkel settled a lawsuit regarding Sillerman‘s alleged theft of the idea for SFX. The men said they help put together seven of the eight original deals that created SFX, but were never paid with the company equity they were promised. SFX settled the suit two weeks before it went to trial. Steven N. Feldman of Hueston Hennigan LLP told Billboard that the plaintiffs are “very satisfied with the settlement.” They’re probably less satisfied seeing their settlement gobbled up in a bankruptcy.
3. Mike Bindra and Laura Depalma
Amount owed: $10 million
SFX owes the pair money for its 2014 purchase of Made Events and the Electric Zoo Festival in New York. SFX still owes a final payment of $5 million each, which had been to be paid in full no later than 2018, according to the company’s contract.
2. Totem OneLove Group
Amount owed: $11 million
SFX still owes the Australian EDM conglomerate for its purchase of the Stereosonic EDM festival in Melbourne.
1. Alda Events, Netherlands
Amount owed: $23.4 Million
Holding companies for Allan Hardenberg and David Lewis sold SFX a 50% share in their Dutch dance company in 2014. Read the SEC Filing on the transaction here.
