COVID-19 Updates

Statement from BPT Leadership

Updated June 9, 2020

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It’s no secret the events business was hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. The need for physical distancing led to a tsunami of event changes, postponements, and, ultimately, cancellations. 

As part of the arts community, Brown Paper Tickets is one of many businesses that has suffered mightily from the pandemic, and, as a service provider that specializes in supporting working artists and organizers of small- and mid-sized events, our situation added to the burden of the very people we built our business to serve. Please know we are deeply sorry, and we are working hard to make it right. 

Although nothing could have prepared us for a crisis of this scale, we know some of our actions resulted in greater hardship for our customers: We didn’t plan for a catastrophic failure of our automated systems; we abruptly stopped payments to protect our business; we didn’t clearly communicate what we knew when we knew it. 

The result has been a snarl of delayed payments, revoked checks, stalled refunds and, understandably, angry customers. We temporarily laid off most of our staff. Further, we have been so focused on operational issues that we stopped communicating, adding to our customers’ frustration. 

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The road to resolving our problems is long and difficult, but, in the same way we own our mistakes, we take responsibility for actively pursuing solutions. While we continue working to address our outstanding payment issues, we are also taking significant measures to better protect event organizers’ payments going forward and ensure those using our platform to ticket current and future events are paid in a timely manner.

We also have a better appreciation for the importance of providing timely, accurate information, and we are committed to improving our communications to keep information flowing and ensure the questions of our clients and partners are heard and answered. 

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We are proud of being an independent company built by and for artists and event organizers.  We regret the impact on our customers and look forward to regaining their trust. 

William Scott Jordan

Founder & President