DEAG Clicks With Free & Virgin

DEAG chief Peter Schwenkow has expanded his company’s Swiss operation by setting up a concert agency called Starclick Entertainment and hiring the directors of the bankrupt Free & Virgin to run it.

The move means Schwenkow’s Berlin-based company effectively takes over the operation of what was Switzerland’s second-largest promoter without having to pay anything for it.

DEAG chief ops officer Christian Diekmann says discussions regarding the setting up of Starclick – a joint venture with Swiss media company Ringier AG – started a little over a month ago. Diekmann denied the talks were prompted by the imminent demise of Free & Virgin.

In Switzerland, DEAG regularly works with Ringier, which has a 48 percent share in the German company’s subsidiary Good News, the country’s biggest concert promoter. Ringier is also its founding partner in The Classical Music Company that was started in January 2010.

Diekmann confirmed Starclick will take over the shows Free & Virgin had in the diary, but says it’s only to avoid disappointing fans who’ve bought tickets for shows already on sale.

It also means the ticket-buyers won’t become creditors of the bankrupt company.

Stefan Matthey and Harry Sprenger filed the 40-year-old Free & Virgin for bankruptcy Oct. 3.

Having traded for four decades, the Zurich-based firm was said to have been taken down by heavy losses sustained by the two-day Sonisphere Festival it staged at Basel June 23-24.

The national papers reported a crowd of 25,000 for a bill that had Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, and Alice Cooper, but a day earlier a lineup including Judas Priest, Whitesnake and some lower-profile metal acts did only 9,000.

The papers also said the return wasn’t enough to pay back the loans Free & Virgin took out to stage the event, which needed a total attendance of 45,000 to show a profit.

The bankrupt company’s first creditors’ meeting is expected at the end of the month.