Tom HallFesticket, the festival experience platform, has appointed ex-lastminute.com CEO Ian McCaig as the new chairman of the board, and legendary concert producer and promoter Harvey Goldsmith CBE (main image) as senior advisor to the company.
A well known name in the travel industry, McCaig joined the founders and the board of lastminute.com in 2003 when it was still a public company. He was appointed CEO in 2006 following the sale of lastminute.com to Sabre Corporation for $1.1bn and led the development of the business for a further five years. He subsequently became CEO at one of the first new challenger entrants to the UK energy market, First Utility, growing the company to around 1 million customers and £1bn revenue before the business was sold to Shell at the end of 2017.
McCaig also sits on the boards of M-Kopa Ltd (the leading off-grid solar company in Africa), Seedrs (a pioneer of equity crowdfunding), the British Tourist Authority and English Heritage.
Harvey Goldsmith CBE is a visionary producer and promoter of rock concerts, charity events and television broadcasts, with achievements in the industry stretching back over more than 50 years. He has produced, managed and promoted shows with most of the world’s major artists and was responsible for the two largest music events the world has ever seen: Live Aid and Live 8.
Goldsmith has received numerous awards including a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 1996 and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Minister of Culture in 2006. In July 2012, Harvey received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Brighton.
After recently announcing the acquisition of the UK-based multi-award winning ticketing and cashless POS platform, Event Genius, these appointments mark another major step forward in enabling Festicket’s mission to become the world’s largest two-sided platform for live events.
Zack Sabban, Festicket CEO & co-founder, said: “We’re so happy to welcome both Ian and Harvey to the company. Having admired their careers from afar for some time, to be able to have them join the Festicket family at this exciting time and help accelerate us to the next level in our development is something we’re very pleased to have been able to make happen.”