The firm "Gigs Tix", for years the main distributor of tickets for the biggest festivals in Serbia - EXIT among them - has been sold. The buyer: a Croatian interest group. And that's where the scandal starts, because the sellers reportedly cross a line that goes well beyond the licensing paperwork.

The question is simple. Who sells the tickets for EXIT, one of the biggest regional music brands, to people who on their own platform promote concerts by Marko Perković Thompson? Thompson is a Croatian singer with a long list of publicly aired anti-Serbian and nationalist statements. This isn't trivial. It is culturally serious.

According to reports, "Gigs Tix" is linked to EXIT's general manager Ilija Matković and to his partner Dejan Mišić. The platform has subsidiaries in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina - which means it is not only a Serbian company but a regional network for ticket sales.

EXIT has spent recent years building its name as a festival of an open spirit and regional cooperation. Thompson's ideology is the opposite: closed nationalism with historical baggage. If the same platform sells for both - who is the one paying? Obviously the audience, which doesn't know what it is subsidising with every ticket.

The Balkans have already seen this. Regional brands that build themselves on the principle of "togetherness in difference", and then slowly retreat into purely commercial structures where there is neither idea nor principle, only profit. That is a process that has played out with many of the region's mega-events - from launched starts to today's passive brands.

The question now is: is the EXIT audience, many of them from Macedonia too, ready to admit that in the name of music it is paying for platforms that promote everything and nothing? The market doesn't decide this. The consumer's ethical compass - decides it.