See Tickets On The Block

Within six months of non-executive chairman Nick Blackburn quitting because he wasn’t happy with the way his Dutch masters were running the company, See Tickets has put itself up for sale.

It has brought in advisers to find a buyer prepared to stump up something in the region of £100 million ($162.2 million), according to The Sunday Times.

See Tickets is the UK’s second-largest ticket seller behind Ticketmaster.

Once part of Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Really Useful Group, the company was sold to Joop van den Ende’s Dutch-based Stage Entertainment in January 2008. Lord Lloyd-Webber reportedly paid himself a £38 million dividend after the deal was inked.

Ten months later, Stage picked up about £250 million by selling 60 percent of the business to Parcom Capital, a subsidiary of Dutch banker ING Group.

Last July, Stage sold the German division of See Tickets and the country’s Ticket Online Group to CTS Eventim for $183.5 million.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office subsequently launched an inquiry into the deal to check if it infringed the country’s merger control regulations.

Blackburn has just returned to the ticket-selling business by joining the board of Ingresso Group, a new venture launched with funding from Oakfield Capital Partners.