Eventim Favourite To Get See Tickets

German ticketing giant CTS Eventim appears to be the favourite to nab the UK’s See Tickets, three months after Dutch investment firm Parcom put it up for sale.

See Tickets is the second-biggest ticket company in Britain behind Ticketmaster and is likely to cost somewhere between £100 million and £120 million.

The second-round bidding is already under way and Klaus-Peter Schulenberg’s Eventim is reportedly the frontrunner, ahead of AEG and The Ambassador Theatre Group, which is backed by private equity firm Exponent and in 2009 paid about £100 million for Live Nation’s theatre business.

One unnamed insider told Financial Times that Eventim’s interest in See Tickets has already spooked the several private equity companies that had been circling.

When See Tickets was first put on the block in early March, Eventim investor relations director Marco Haeckermann told Pollstar he didn’t want to comment on “speculation” but acknowledged he could see several reasons why Eventim would be viewed as an interested party.

First of all, it could find the money. Its earnings and profits are breaking records year-on-year and Haeckermann says the company is “committed to its expansion strategy.”

It’s also in need of a UK foothold after the breakdown of its deal with Live Nation left the company starting from scratch in that market.

Schulenberg is known to have had his eye on See Tickets since 2008, when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group was on the verge of selling the company to Joop van den Ende’s Stage Entertainment.

Apparently he was too late in showing his interest and the deal with the Dutch company was all but inked.

Stage Entertainment subsequently sold 60 percent of the business to Parcom, part of Dutch investment company ING Group.

Schulenebrg has since moved himself into a position where trying to buy See Tickets looks like the next step of his strategy.

Last summer Eventim picked up the German division of See Tickets for close to £115 million as part of a package that included the country’s Ticket Online Group.

He’s also got a ready-made chief exec, having tapped Nick Blackburn to run his current UK ops.

Blackburn left See Tickets in September after running the company for 10 years, including when it was part of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group.

He was said to be unhappy with the new Dutch ownership. He may soon have chance to try again under German ownership.