Vivendi yesterday announced a provisional agreement to sell its ticketing and festivals business to CTS Eventim in a deal which, according to Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, "supports our internationalisation strategy and will also benefit artists and their managers, as we will be able to offer even more seamless services on a global scale".
Vivendi's ticketing company, See Tickets, will have been of most interest to Eventim when negotiating the purchase. It generated more than 75% of revenues at Vivendi's live music division, which operates as Vivendi Village, and will significantly increase Eventim's presence in the UK market, where See Tickets is the number two ticketing provider.
It emerged last September that Vivendi, which also used to be the parent company of Universal Music, was planning to sell its interests in live music. As well as See Tickets, Vivendi Village also owns a number of festivals, including UK-based events Love Supreme and Kite.
Sources at the time said that Vivendi bosses felt that their live music division was unlikely to ever achieve sufficient scale to be able to properly compete with the big players in live entertainment, Live Nation and AEG, and therefore the company should look to exit the sector.
In a statement yesterday, Vivendi said it has signed a "put option agreement" with Eventim, and that the deal should complete in the coming months "after consultation of the employee representative bodies concerned".
Hala Bavière, CEO of Vivendi Village, added, "We at Vivendi are convinced that CTS Eventim will be the right company to bring our ticketing and festival activities to new heights, supporting See Tickets to remain a state-of-the-art company in services and technology, while fostering the growth of the festivals and preserving their unique identities and audience".