BEAVERTON, Ore. — UPDATE: Anton and Cynthia Sultanov told KGW that they received the full amount due from Brown Paper Tickets on Friday, Feb. 17, 2023.
Sultanov Russian Ballet Academy, a Beaverton-based dance studio, was missing close to $20,000 in ticket sales from its December productions of The Nutcracker.
Brown Paper Tickets, the Seattle-based ticketing platform Sultanov Ballet Academy used for the shows, collected the money through ticket sales and has failed to pay back the studio for more than two months, according to SBA owner and artistic director Anton Sultanov.
"It's putting some stress on our next production, we rely somewhat on the proceeds from the show to fund our next performance," Sultanov said. "This is substantial. [We need it for] booking the theater for the next performance, ordering the backdrop, purchasing costumes and hiring guest instructors."
Cynthia Sultanov said she sent multiple emails and left multiple voicemails over the last two months without response.
But when she left a message saying the studio would be talking with local media about the missing payments, she received a quick email reply.
"Within two hours the email came through, saying a direct deposit payment has been issued for your account," Cynthia Sultanov said. "The timing is too coincidental to not be because of my voicemail saying I'm going to take this to the news media."
Artur Sultanov agreed, saying the reference of a news story prompted the quick response.
"I think they don't want any more bad publicity," Sultanov said.
He said he's hopeful the money will be sent and received by Friday, although he's still cautious.
"If I didn’t wait for that long maybe I’d be more trusting of the company, but sense it’s been such a long time, I’m more skeptical," Artur Sultanov said.
Sultanov teaches about 80 students at the ballet academy, which has been open for about 10 years, he said.
SBA had used Brown Paper Tickets before and they didn't have problems, he said.
Although this time, when Artur and Cynthia Sultanov didn't receive payment and searched Brown Paper Tickets online, they said they found concerning reports.
"After pretty much six weeks, we started looking online, social media, are other people having the same issues like us and we found a lot of information we didn’t know before," Artur Sultanov said.
For one, the Washington State Office of the Attorney General sued Brown Paper Tickets in September of 2020.
The AG’s office said Brown Paper Tickets had refused to refund ticket buyers who bought tickets for canceled events and organizer who held past events. More than 1,200 people had filed complaints about the company.
Brown Paper Tickets settled the lawsuit in the spring of 2021 and agreed to pay $9 million to an estimate 45,000 people affected nationwide.
However, the complaints didn't stop with the settlement payments.
A spokesperson for the AG's office told KGW it has received 97 new complaints outside the scope of the consent decree.
Brown Paper Tickets has paid to resolve all the Washington-based complaints, according to the spokesperson, but the remaining 66 complaints relate to non-Washington events and information on those payments was unknown.
KGW reached out to Brown Paper Tickets for this report but did not get a response.
The acquisition news release said BPT is "unique in the industry" as it "made it is mission to refund all customers and organizations for events canceled due to the pandemic, and [was] perhaps the only company that decided to refund all service fees to affected customers."
The release also said Events.com has provided financial support to help BPT with refunds and payments.
Cynthia Sultanov said the contract with BPT allows the company to collect a fee of about $1.50 per ticket sold and then 6% of the total proceeds before returning the rest of the funds to the event organizers.
Artur Sultanov said SBA will likely not contract with BPT for future performances, and he wished others small businesses and arts organizations would know about his concerns.
"I'm scared for people who might be in the same situation and I know BPT is still selling tickets for other productions, I want other people to be aware," he said.
Sultanov Ballet Academy is preparing for a May production of Swan Lake.
Maria Calabria, a Lake Oswego High School student and longtime SBA student, said.
"I think this studio does a good job of not only teaching us the important things about ballet, but also about life and how we can incorporate the values we learn here into our school and family lives," Calabria said. "It's really fun to be a part of something bigger than yourself."
