AEG Buys Hultsfred Booking Co

AEG Live is buying the company that handles the bill for Sweden’s Hultsfred Festival and its co-director Janne Kleman will be joining the U.S. firm’s Stockholm office.

The deal for AEG to acquire Supreme Royal Deluxe, which Kleman co-owns with Gothenburg-based Petri Lunden, is expected to be completed on December 14th.

It begins to look as if AEG and arch-rival Live Nation are picking their teams as Niklas Jonsson, Kleman’s assistant at Supreme Royal Deluxe, is moving to Luger – part-owned by LN’s EMA Telstar – to join a booking team that already has Ola Broquist, Robin Sumpton and Niklas Herrström.

Therése Elofson, Hultsfred’s marketing and sponsorship manager, won’t be returning from her year’s maternity leave as she’s also joining Luger.

Lunden tells Pollstar that the "undisclosed" sum AEG is paying for SRD is "a very fair offer" and it enables Kleman to continue sourcing the talent for the annual event.

Lunden in September sold his Talent Trust management company, which represents such acts as The Cardigans, Europe, Neverstore and D-A-D, to Kentaro Group, one of the world’s leading sports rights agencies.

He’s now chairing Hagenburg AB, the company Kentaro restructured to accommodate the absorption of Talent Trust, and he and Kleman agreed it was time for SRD to move on.

"Throughout the last four or five years, while Dave Maloney was at Live Nation, I worked very closely with him on getting the international acts for Hultsfred," Kleman said. "We’ve known each other for over 10 years and it looked right when the opportunity came up.

"We’ll booking the festival, promoting concerts and building the company," Kleman said.

Maloney and fellow AEG booker Mikael Tillman quit Live Nation at the end of September and have since set up the American company’s Scandinavian base.

The latest developments draw an interesting battle line in the Swedish festival market.

On one side is AEG and the 30,000-capacity Hultsfred, which needs a boost after losing about $1 million this year. It still remains the country’s most prestigious festival.

On the other side are the similarly sized Accelerator and Way Out West festivals, which are owned and run by Luger. Both had a successful 2007.

Parent company EMA Telstar also books the 15,000-capacity Arvika Festival, which Maloney programmed until he quit the company.

Jonsson’s arrival means Luger will also be booking one or two of the better smaller festivals as he programmes the indoor Umeå Open Festival and Stockholm’s Propaganda Festival.