CTS Eventim’s Klaus-Peter Schulenberg: ‘Our Competitors Are U.S. Companies’

– CTS Eventim
CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg

In an exclusive Interview with business magazine Capital, CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg addressed the German anti-trust body’s failure to recognize the nature of online businesses.

The German competition watch dog Bundeskartellamt had denied a merger between CTS Eventim and German promoter Four Artists last year, a decision that was recently upheld by a Higher Regional Court.

Schulenberg criticized the decision, stating that the German antitrust legislation was “misguided”, as it only considered the German market.

“Our competitors are U.S. companies,” he said, adding that they were able to achieve completely different economies of scale.

European companies that were considered on a national level were clearly at a disadvantage, he said.

Schulenberg also addressed a German High Court decision against CTS Eventim’s print-at-home service fee.

“We don’t want any quarrel,” he told Capital, adding that his company would scrap the controversial fee, which used to charge ticket-buyers €2,50 for printing out their tickets at home, permanently.

The reason CTS Eventim had added the service charge to its Printdirect offer in the first place was the investment the company had to make in order to equip venues with the necessary control systems.

And while he emphasized that other countries didn’t object to the service charge, he acknowledged that the mechanisms behind the fee hadn’t been communicated convincingly enough.

CTS Eventim had addressed the court ruling against the service charge immediately after it became public in August, and already assured full compliance back then.

Schulenberg told Capital, that the loss of this particular service charge would cost his company roughly €1 million in revenues annually, seeing that only a small percentage of fans were printing out their tickets.

The service charge remains in place for the time being for soccer tickets and other tickets sold via Eventim Sports, as the court ruling does not touch the business of the CTS Eventim subsidiary.

However, according to the report, talks with the sports associations, in order to find a solution for fans, clubs and CTS Eventim, are already underway.