Koopmans Goes Back To Austria

He’s also returning team-handed with business partners that include three of Germany’s top acts or the management companies behind them.

The four companies are effectively taking over Arcadia, the Vienna-based multi-faceted concert agency run by Filip Potocki and Bernhard Kaufmann since 2008. The new venture, which is being called Arcadia Live, will have Kaufmann as its managing director.

Koopmans’ partners in the takeover are Alex Richter’s Four Artists, which represents top German hip-hop group Die Fantastischen Vier, with the act basically owning the company and handling its own representation. Four Artists’ other arena acts include Seeed, Marteria, and Clueso. Also involved is Kiki Ressler’s KKT, which is owned by main client Die Toten Hosen, the Düsseldorf punk band that’s arguably Germany’s biggest act. KKT’s other arena fillers include Die Ärzte, Beatsteaks, and Fettes Brot.

The four-pronged German invasion is completed by the live division of Stuttgart-based hip-hop label Chimperator, which represents CRO, the German rapper who’s also capable of selling out arenas. In Austria, Koopmans has previously teamed with MusicNet chief Harry Jenner and Nova Music head Ewald Tatar, the firms behind the country’s FM Frequency and Nuke festivals.

“They made me a good offer,” Koopmans told Pollstar, explaining why in 2007 he pulled out of his first expansion into Germany’s southeastern neighbour.

Apart from being one of Germany’s top tour and festival promoters, FKP’s latest expansion means it now also has some sort of market presence in Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. It has festivals in all seven territories. Arcadia’s Live’s first venture will be to revive Nuke Festival, which between 2000 and 2009 was one of the mainstays of the Austrian outdoor calendar with crowds of up to 35,000.

Jenner ran the event with Norbert Bauer, who still holds the rights to the brand, but Nuke was problematic and moved from Zwentendorf to Pielachtal and on to St. Pölten and Vienna, before throwing in the towel when the 2009 event only did 7,500 per day.

The new Nuke, which is being run in with Bauer, will be a one-dayer at Graz, the country’s second-largest city. Arcadia Live will also do the second instalment of HipHop Open Austria and the Tocotronic & Guests Open Air, which are also scheduled for this summer. In 2007 Jenner and Koopmans appeared to try to shore up Nuke by re-marketing it as a hip-hop or dance-oriented festival, booking a lineup that included Beastie Boys, Die Fantastischen Vier, The Prodigy, Wir Sind Helden, The Roots, Calexico and Silbermond.

As part of the deal, Four Artists and Chimperator Live will share German booking duties for the Salzburg-based Austrian indie band Olympique, which has just released its debut album Crystal Palace on Arcadia’s in-house label. The strategic question of FKP’s arrival in Vienna, the pivotal city between western and eastern Europe, is whether it will now track parent company CTS Eventim and expand further east. The German ticketing giant has offices in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.