LN And CTS Renew Vows

Live Nation has confirmed that its long-term alliance with CTS Eventim remains in full effect and won’t be impacted by the U.S. company’s planned merger with Ticketmaster.

“This removes all speculation. We have never doubted the contractual fidelity of Live Nation,” said Eventim chief Klaus-Peter Schulenberg in a statement. He previously declined to comment on how the American merger would affect his Munich-based company.

Market observers questioned how LN could merge with Ticketmaster while fully honoring a 10-year deal with Eventim, which entails the world’s No.1 promoter deploying the German company’s ticketing software.

The essence of the alliance is that Live Nation receives a license for Eventim’s ticketing software in North America and that Eventim takes over the ticketing operation on behalf of Live Nation for many national markets in Europe.

Most Live Nation venues have already switched to the CTS Eventim systems, and presales for major concert tours in 2009 are now being handled with the new software.
In Europe, Eventim has already taken over the ticketing operation for Live Nation using its existing infrastructure in Sweden, Finland, Poland and the Netherlands. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Great Britain and Norway will follow shortly.

Eventim is Europe’s market leader in the ticketing field and one of the leading providers of live entertainment.

More than 70 million tickets for well more than 100,000 events are sold annually using the company’s systems.

Despite the media speculation that’s developed since the potential LN-Ticketmaster merger has been made public and investors’ questions on the matter, LN chief Michael Rapino has insisted his company would honour the Eventim deal.