Venema Starts Over With V Signs

The fallout from the bankruptcy of Dutch singer Marco Borsato’s The Entertainment Group has caused promoter and agent Willem Venema to wind up the company he founded in 2004 and start again.

Venema started The Alternative when he left Live Nation-Mojo Concerts, but last September the euro 26 million collapse of TEG – which had been a major shareholder in The Alternative since 2007 – has forced him to build Double Vee from the ashes.

The official receiver winding up TEG decided he would need to dismantle the sister companies, although he did offer the heads of each the opportunity to buy the titles.

“I considered what I would get for my money and decided I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle,” he told Pollstar, explaining that he also looked at buying the name W Concerts from Mojo Concerts.

W Concerts was the company Venema owned and ran until selling it to Mojo in the ’80s, but he discovered that Live Nation – which owns Mojo – liquidated it in 2005.

He could have tried to revive the name but he and his partner Jacco Van Lanen – whose surname also begins with a V – opted for Double Vee (or VV) instead.

The logo looks like a three-fingered salute, or two adjoining two-fingered salutes, and the company launch includes T-shirts that explain why the letter W should in fact be pronounced Double Vee.

Venema, one of the founders of Lowlands Festival during his time at Live Nation, also reported his Rotterdam-based company enjoyed a very busy Eurosonic-Noorderslag in Groningen Jan. 13-16. The three days of meetings and presentations it held at the showcase festival resulted in it booking 70 shows.