Mark Filby Takes TEG to Court Over One Direction Tour

An early One Direction tour and its cross-promotion through Coles is the stuff of a new court case which pits concert promoter Mark Filby against TEG.

Filby, the veteran Sydney-based promoter who worked on Lee Kernighan’s Pass the Hat Around, Doc Neeson tours and many other projects, launched proceedings against TEG alleging the confidential information he’d shared with TEG, then known as Nine Live, was “stolen,” according to The Australian.

On Monday (Sept. 12), reps for Filby told NSW Supreme Court that their client had presented a proposal to TEG CEO Geoff Jones during a meeting in February 2013 in which he discussed commercial sponsorship and “underwriting” for the 1D tour.

Later, Coles and the boy band entered into an arrangement in which the chain giant promoted the national tour by giving away 10,000 tickets to an exclusive concert — a matinee show in Sydney — with the purchase of specific goods, including Coca-Cola and Cadbury’s chocolate.

The multi-media campaign carried the #Coles1D Twitter hashtag and a Website which featured a brief clip of the pop singers standing before a Coles-branded backdrop.

Christian Hart, counsel for Filby, alleged TEG took his client’s concept and applied it to the Coles arrangement.

TEG and its reps, however, reject the claims. Jones and senior executives within the group already had a similar project in the works, the court heard.

Catherine Gleeson, on behalf of TEG, the live entertainment, ticketing and data giant, said Jones rejected suggestion that a confidential discussion had occurred, though the chief executive was unable to attend the court session after heading abroad in August, to oversee the TEG’s recently-launched Europe division.

Justice Slattery apparently wasn’t impressed.

“Mr Jones is a very important witness in my point of view, he is the witness who opposes the version given by the plaintiffs,” Slattery remarked, News Corp’s titles report.

“I simply say the court does not wish to see repeated again what has happened in this case when a witness who is scheduled to give evidence in Australia and who lives in Australia and knows he is to be cross-examined organises a trip for business purposes knowing it will conflict with his requirement to give evidence.”

The Coles campaign with One Direction certainly wasn’t the first of its kind, though it was seen as a spectacular grab for the tween market, following promotions with heritage acts Status Quo and Normie Rowe.

TMN reached out to TEG for comment on the ongoing case.

It’s been an eventful week for TEG and its business in Australia.

Sport and music fans vented on social media when the Ticketek website reportedly crashed Monday morning (Sept. 12), leaving many supporters locked out after queuing hours for tickets.

According to the ABC, a high demand for tickets for the two NRL semifinals, the AFL preliminary finals and country singer Luke Combs’s upcoming tour, which all went on sale at 10am Monday morning, created “chaos” on the official ticketing platform, with much of that frustration spilling out on socials.