German live music firm DEAG has taken complete ownership of festivals company I-Motion, which promotes dance music events like Nature One, Mayday, Toxicator, Ruhr-In-Love and Syndicate. It has had a 50.1% stake in the business since 2019.
DEAG has festival, tour and ticketing businesses in a number of European markets, including in the UK with Kilimanjaro and Belladrum.
Founded in the 1990s, in 2013 I-Motion was acquired by SFX Entertainment, which at the time was in the process of buying up as many dance music events as it could.
After the collapse of SFX, I-Motion became a subsidiary of LiveStyle, the company that came out of the SFX bankruptcy. Following the 2019 deal, LiveStyle retained 49.9% of the company, which is the stake DEAG has now acquired.
DEAG co-CEO Detlef Kornett says that, since taking a controlling stake in I-Motion in 2019, "our expectations have been more than fulfilled, both strategically and economically, so that the acquisition of all shares in one of Europe’s most successful EDM event promoters is now the logical next step for us".
"Together with the long-standing Managing Director of I-Motion, Oliver Vordemvenne, and his great team", he goes on, "we have steadily expanded our open-air and EDM events in recent years and see high potential for expansion in this area, also in other European countries".
Vordemvenne himself adds: "We are very pleased that we are now fully part of the DEAG family and will continue to write our success story. Together with a strong team, we want to further develop our event formats and expand into new markets. We still have a lot of plans for the future".