Unlock the Editor’s Digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
The house owners of London’s O2 Enviornment and Hammersmith Apollo have every entered the race to purchase See Tickets, after French media group Vivendi kicked off a gross sales course of for one of many UK’s greatest ticketing retailers.
Vivendi is hoping to fetch as much as €300mn for See Tickets, in line with two folks accustomed to the matter, and a primary spherical of indicative bids has been submitted in current weeks.
Anschutz Leisure Group, which owns London’s O2 Enviornment, and German ticketing group CTS Eventim, with which AEG co-owns London’s Hammersmith Apollo, had been amongst them, they added.
For potential bidders, See Tickets provides a big main ticketing service provider, which is projected to promote 43mn tickets throughout 10 nations this yr, in addition to an occasions arm which was behind eight huge European festivals this yr together with the UK’s Love Supreme pageant.
AEG, via its ticketing arm AXS, and Eventim have already got main ticketing companies within the UK, however buying See Tickets will give the profitable bidder a stronger foothold to compete with trade chief Reside Nation-owned Ticketmaster. See Tickets additionally derives barely lower than a 3rd of its ticketing revenues from the US.
The bidding conflict comes because the dwell occasions trade is experiencing a growth in demand regardless of the price of residing disaster.
Different suitors are additionally anticipated to become involved within the public sale for See Tickets, in line with folks near the method, which is projected to expertise excessive single-digit progress over the following few years from a base of €147mn in revenues throughout its ticketing and festivals enterprise this yr.
See Tickets, which was a part of Vivendi’s dwell leisure arm Vivendi Village, could be the newest in a sequence of asset disposals by the French media large. Two years in the past Vivendi split its Most worthy enterprise, Common Music Group, by way of an inventory.
Earlier this yr, the group, which is managed by the billionaire household of its founder and famous company raider Vincent Bolloré, additionally accomplished a deal to purchase Lagardère, a publishing and retail enterprise.
Vivendi stated the media conglomerate had “acquired at this stage a number of very encouraging provides relating to the attainable sale of its ticketing and pageant actions”. It additionally famous that the provides had been non-binding, including: “The method continues.”
CTS Eventim, which owns the 22,290-capacity Waldbühne live performance theatre in Berlin and can be behind Italy’s largest multipurpose area set to open in 2025, has been quickly increasing its ticketing arm, which grew by 36 per cent yr on yr within the 9 months to September to €459mn. Group revenues stood at €1.75bn throughout the identical interval.
AEG is second in market share to Ticketmaster within the US, however has struggled to take gross sales from the dominant participant.
Vivendi purchased See Tickets for €96mn together with debt in 2011. The enterprise grew from a file store within the English metropolis of Nottingham into an enormous ticketing platform for theatre and dwell music. See Tickets was beforehand owned by theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Actually Helpful Group.
Reside Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, is unlikely to submit a bid for See Tickets, because it might appeal to undesirable consideration from UK regulators over antitrust considerations simply because the US Division of Justice is probing the corporate for a similar causes, in line with an individual near the public sale.
AEG and Eventim declined to remark.