‘This Business Always Offers Opportunities’: Q’s With Wouter de Wilde, Greenhouse Talent

Wouter de Wilde is managing director and head promoter at Greenhouse Talent, the largest independent concert promoter in the Benelux countries. We sent him some questions for this year’s Dutch Focus, to get a sense of the health of the market, as well as trends, challenges and opportunities that shape a promoter’s business in 2025/2026.

Keeping It Lowlands: Annual Dutch Focus 2025

Pollstar: How would you describe the state of your Dutch business as we approach the end of 2025, and how would you sum up this year from a business standpoint?
Wouter deWilde: The Dutch market is healthy and doing well overall. The same goes for our business at Greenhouse Talent, which is even growing steadily. We do see that the pattern of big shows doing well and smaller shows struggling continues.

What’s your outlook on 2026 (and beyond)?
The expectation is more of the same; we’re not too concerned about stagnation, though we do keep a close eye on which segments in the market might offer opportunity or threat. It remains important to keep up with momentum for artists and genres.

Any trends that stand out to you?
Country music is showing strong growth across mainland Europe and specifically the Netherlands. Club shows are selling out faster than ever, and artists are scaling up quickly like Luke Combs at the Johan Cruijff ArenA being the prime example. Festivals, including C2C: County to Country and Once in a Blue Moon Festival, are also seeing expanding and increasingly loyal audiences. Overall, the genre is strengthening on all levels. It is also great to see that K-Pop is turning out to be a very solid genre and our comedy business keeps growing every year too.

Two questions regarding fans’ purchasing habits: are they, one, still waiting longer to buy tickets, generally speaking, i.e., do they buy closer to show date than pre-COVID?
We see that customers still have a strong appetite for tickets and generally aren’t waiting longer to buy. In the Netherlands especially, arena and stadium on-sales remain very strong. Fan culture is vibrant across all genres, and many fans purchase tickets immediately when they go on sale rather than delaying their decision.

And, two, is there still a great willingness to pay for VIP/Premium/Boutique experiences?
VIP is in demand for sure, as its offering generally is of interest to the customer. Ticket buyers are acquainted with premium ticketing, but it only works when demand for tickets for a show is strong enough – it’s sort of a last resort, instead of an apetizing offering.

What challenges remain to your day-to-day business? What opportunities do you identify?
Dealing with all in-detail demands coming from agencies and managements is a challenge. For instance ticketing and marketing are becoming heavier subjects daily, with a huge demand for in-depth detail, meaning promoters need to grow their teams in order to keep up with what is expected. Where deals become tighter, the workload keeps growing for promoters. Maintaining a healthy business model is a priority for all involved in the industry chain and should be a subject to keep talking about.

Furthermore this business always offers opportunities, meaning that there’s a lot of fast-growing acts we’re able to work on. Also the festival market is under pressure, which can be seen as a threat but also offers opportunities for us as promoters. More partnerships can be looked into and there’s room to change festival concepts.

What’s the state of your festival business? It’s no secret that festivals feel the insane cost increases of recent times the most. How do you make the economics work in spite of the challenging environment?
With the festivals we promote, we’ve not engaged in multi-day, heavyweight events and its competitive nature. We are looking into the mix of headline events in a festival setting and also niches/genres which we see growth in. We’ve ensured to be lean and mean whilst doing our events, so luckily we can say that all of our festivals did well in the last year.

Please name one event/concert/festival/show you witnessed this year that stands out to you.
Tyler, The Creator had an incredible production and show this year, which for me was the show of the year. Also, our festival Spoorpark Live worked out tremendously this year, with great shows by Bryan Adams, The Prodigy and Nile Rodgers & CHIC. Furthermore, it was good to see C2C: Country to Country grow in our market and to be able to have Once In A Blue Moon festival return to the market, which shows that country is still on the rise and we’re happy to be in a leading position for that genre in our market.

What’s next for Greenhouse Talent, and is there anything you’d like to add?
We’re looking forward to the stadium shows with Luke Combs and Zach Bryan next year, which feel victorious after investing so much into country music over the last years.

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