FKP Scorpio Gets Away In Sweden

German promoter FKP Scorpio appears to be getting its claws into the Swedish live music business by upping Get Away Rock Festival’s average attendance to 12,000 per day and selling out a couple of Justin Bieber shows in a little more than 40 minutes.

The Hamburg-based promoter, part-owned by ticketing giant CTS Eventim, is growing its Stockholm base with a view of taking a larger slice of the Nordic market.

Apart from Get Away, which it now owns after buying out minority shareholder Tomas Jernberg, FKP also has Hultsfred Festival and a burgeoning concert business.

In addition to the Bieber shows, which are in the 12,000-capacity Stockholm Globe Arena, the concert business also has shows in the diary for Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Jennifer Lopez, Orbital, and Dragonforce.

“It shows that our efforts to enrichen the Swedish concert scene are starting to pay off,” said Koopmans, who originally entered the Nordic market because he “sensed an opportunity.”

Former Hultsfred Festival booker Gunnar Lagerman is running the festivals, while the concert business is headed by David Maloney, who has twice worked for Live Nation and once for rival AEG.

Next year the festival will move from July to August, presumably to fit better with one or more of the dozen or so festivals that FKP runs in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands.

This year’s Get Away July 5-8 featured Manowar, Saxon, Venom, Behemoth, Dying Fetus and Hawk Eyes.