Eventim Shrugs It Off

Shrugging off US and UK criticism of its ticketing systems, CTS Eventim has shown it’s not hurting in Germany by taking over sales for two of Hamburg’s best-known theatres.

The statement announcing the deal quoted St. Pauli Theatre director Thomas Collien saying he was looking forward to working with “Germany’s most successful ticketing system.”

The St. Pauli Theatre, on the Reeperbahn at Spielbudenplatz, is also one of the country’s oldest privately owned theatres. The Hansa Theatre at Steindamm, in the neighbouring red-light district of St.Georg, claims to have had nearly 40 million visitors since it opened to stage theatre, variety and even small circuses in 1894.

Eventim hasn’t publicly commented on Live Nation chief Michael Rapino’s decision to switch back to Ticketmaster in the US, despite his company signing a 10-year deal with the Bremen-based company at the end of 2007. It also has no commented on LN UK president Paul Latham saying he’s not happy with the way Eventim is handling ticket sales in his territory.

However, off-the-record comments suggest the German company takes the view that Live Nation is publicly discrediting its software as a prelude to dumping the 2007 deal on a global basis.

Part of Eventim’s successful appeal against the UK Competition Commission’s approval of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster deal focussed on the fact it felt the British monopolies regulator didn’t pay enough attention to the fact LN may try to get out of that 2007 deal.

The possibility of LN taking that tact has hovered over Eventim since the possibility of its merger with Ticketmaster was first announced, although it doesn’t look to have impacted the company’s financial performance.

Whatever the reported problems with the software, systems developed and operated by Eventim shifted 80 million tickets in 2009.
Revenues were up 15.4 percent to euro 466.7 million, producing earnings before interest up 41.8 percent to euro 71.3 million.