Eventim Acquires TicketOne

German ticketing giant CTS Eventim has mopped up the 49.82 percent stake of TicketOne it didn’t already own for about euro 20.6 million ($25.5 million).

It bought the shares from Italian investment company AMFIN, Milan. Eventim announced the purchase May 21.

The Bremen-based company was exercising the purchase option agreed upon in 2007, when it paid euro 15.3 million for what was effectively a majority holding in the company.

When Eventim recently announced its Q1 pre-tax profit was up 25.3 percent to euro 22.7 million, it said it would spend 2010 focusing on rolling out its European expansion plans.

The TicketOne acquisition comes three months after Eventim took over Ticketcorner, which claims 60 percent of the Swiss ticket market. In 2009 Ticketcorner made euro 4.4 million from selling 9.3 million tickets.

TicketOne was established in 1998 and is Italy’s market leader. It owns Panischi, which handles ticket distribution for many of the country’s leading music promoters and major events. It also holds 60 percent of TOST, one of the country’s leading theatre ticket sellers.

“The growth driver, as in Germany, is the migration of conventional ticketing business to the Internet as a more profitable sales channel,” explained Eventim chief exec and major shareholder Klaus-Peter Schulenberg. “Italy is an example of how the company is consistently pursuing its European expansion strategy.”

The strategy has yielded important strategic gains in Switzerland and Italy, but it’s coming more than a little unstuck in the UK and Scandinavia.

It has taken Live Nation to the International Court Of Arbitration (ICC) because it claims the world’s biggest concert promoter’s merger with Ticketmaster has caused it to breach the contract LN signed with Eventim at the beginning of 2008.

LN’s counterclaim is based on the German ticket company’s operating platform being short of the minimum contractual standards.