What happened
In June 2026 Tickets.ie collapsed. Cowboys & Heroes had sold its tickets through the platform and was waiting to be paid. When the company went under, the festival was left owed more than €130,000, through no fault of its own.
For a festival, ticket money is what pays for the next one. As Simon put it at the time: “following the collapse of Tickets.ie, our marketing budget for next year will unfortunately be considerably reduced.”
The real problem
That money wasn't at risk because a company went bust. It was at risk because someone else was holding it.
A hard sell
After Tickets.ie, the last thing Cowboys & Heroes wanted was another young ticketing company. Simon was straight about it:
“My company CFO has expressed concerns with using a ticketing platform that is not well established. He has taken the tickets.ie debacle perhaps even worse than I have.”
The festival asked for TicketSoft's accounts, a live demo of the ticketing and scanner apps, a plan for when the internet goes down on site, and how fans would get help. TicketSoft answered every question, met the team at Drumcoura and showed the platform working.
Paid as they sell
Cowboys & Heroes has its own connected Stripe account, and ticket money goes into it as tickets sell.
Early-bird weekend tickets for 2027 went on sale on 31 August 2026, more than nine months before the gates open. The festival had money from the first sale, and can put it to work on the 2027 festival straight away.
The partnership
TicketSoft and Cowboys & Heroes signed a three-year agreement covering the 2027, 2028 and 2029 festivals.
After what the festival went through, TicketSoft waived its platform fee for 2027 as a courtesy.
For other festivals
With TicketSoft you get paid as you sell, into your own connected Stripe account. Irish-owned, with a person to talk to.