ITY 2019

THE GLOBAL LIVE ENTERTAINMENT TICKETING GUIDE FEATURING TICKET TECH MARKET CONSOLIDATION THE INNOVATORS PLUS MORE THAN 40 LIVE ENTERTAINMENT MARKETS PROFILED

AN ILMC PUBLICATION £149 | €149

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS Welcome

05

FEATURES Ticket Tech

06

The Innovators

08

Major Moves

20

COUNTRY PROFILES Argentina

22

Australia

23

Austria

25

The Baltics

26

Belgium

27

Brazil

28

Bulgaria

29

Canada

30

Chile

31

China

32

Czech Republic

34

Denmark

35

Finland

36

France

37

Germany

39

Greece

41

Hong Kong

42

Hungary

43

India

44

Ireland

45

Israel

46

Italy

47

Japan

48

Luxembourg

50

Mexico

51

The Netherlands

52

New Zealand

53

Norway

54

Poland

55

Portugal

56

Romania

56

Russia

57

Singapore

58

Slovakia

59

South Africa

60

Spain

61

Sweden

62

Switzerland

63

Turkey

64

United Arab Emirates

65

United Kingdom

66

United States of America

72

ITY Partners

75

Company Index

76

06

22

63

08

20

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 3

DEAR READER Welcome to the International Ticketing Yearbook 2019, featuring profiles of 44 of the key markets worldwide.

Now in its fifth year, this is the most comprehensive review of the state of the global ticketing industry – which continues to demonstrate dynamism and innovation.

Reflecting that, we’re taking an in-depth look at the latest developments in ticketing, including the most recent technological advances in things such as facial recognition and augmented reality, plus ideas such as subscription-based models. With no slowing down of tech companies’ interest in the ticketing sector, there are some fascinating ideas to explore.

We are also profiling some of the companies that are developing new and exciting business models, services or platforms, as they seek to reduce fraud and improve the customer experience.

Highlighting the dynamism in the market, our feature Major Moves (see page 20) looks at the ongoing consolidation happening around the world. The last 12 months have seen some significant acquisitions, not least CTS Eventim’s move into France, and Live Nation Entertainment’s buy-out of Mexico’s Ocesa Entertainment – two big-money developments that could have wide-reaching impact. Where will the next major plays be?

We’re looking forward to finding out.

A big thank-you to all those named in the masthead below, who have left no stone unturned as they’ve compiled and honed these detailed reviews of the state of the ticketing business around the world. Their tireless work is what enables this report to be so valuable to so many. Plus, my thanks to all the companies and organisations who have taken part in and supported this year’s ITY. Finally, I’d like to thank our executive editor Tim Chambers for providing his incredible knowledge and insight gained from three decades in the live sector. This tome wouldn’t be possible without you all.

I hope you find this year’s publication useful and a valuable resource throughout the forthcoming 12 months.

PWC’S TOP 20 MARKETS, 2019, BY LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES (US$MILLIONS) 1

USA

8,621

2

Germany

1,873

3

Japan

1,659

4

UK

1,501

5

France

924

6

Italy

635

7

Netherlands

626

8

Canada

610

9

Australia

481

10

Russia

418

11

Sweden

393

12

South Korea

378

13

Switzerland

370

14

Denmark

312

15

Norway

304

16

Austria

304

17

Belgium

273

18

Spain

249

19

China

188

20

Mexico

182

James Drury, Editor

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 IQ Magazine Unit 31 Tileyard Road King’s Cross London N7 9AH

PUBLISHER ILMC & Suspicious Marketing EDITOR James Drury | james@ilmc.com EXECUTIVE EDITOR Tim Chambers | chambers.tj@gmail.com DESIGN Philip Millard | rathernicedesign.com

MARKETING & ADVERTISING Archie Carmichael | archie@iq-mag.net CONTRIBUTORS Lars Brandle, Ben Cardew, Joe Henley, Karl-Hermann Lipp, Gordon Masson, Christine Payne, Justin Sweeting, Adam Woods

SUB EDITOR Michael Muldoon | michael@ilmc.com

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 5

TICKET TECH

The pace of technological change presents an exciting array of options for ticketing companies.

James Drury examines the latest developments.

© STOCK.ADOBE.COM

F

rom methods of tackling fraud to improving the visitor experience, firms are exploring a variety of tools.

High on everyone’s minds is the rapid rise of mobile tickets – as frequently reported throughout the market profiles in this publication. But this is just the start of a mobile-first paradigm shift.

“We’ve got a generation of new consumers coming through now and they don’t just expect their services to be on mobile, they expect them to be mobile first,” says industry veteran Steve Machin, global director of ticketing strategy and innovation at FanDragon. “People are buying tickets now who don’t ‘go online’ to do something, they just use their phone. This move to mobile will make the shift away from CDs look like a slow meander.”

Security is the top priority, says international ticketing consultant Tim Chambers. “Unfortunately, prevention of fraud costs time and resources and all too often organisations fail to plan for worstcase, without any regard as to how to recover

post-incident, and assume they’ll continue to get away without specialised focus.”

He adds: “Related to this is the issue of combatting automated bots that impact site availability (DDOS), on-sale queueing, event webpage reload, ticket purchase and other operational factors. Unfortunately, as an industry, too little has been done with shared expertise, best practise or market intel.”

Maureen Andersen, president and CEO of the International Ticketing Association (INTIX), thinks ticket authenticity is a significant focus for companies when considering how new technology can help them.

“Tickets delivered to your mobile is well established, but what will be more important in this matter is that the distribution is tied to your mobile, for example, by using a barcode that’s refreshed frequently. Ticketmaster has now released SafeTix, which is not unlike other technologies out there, but that the largest ticketing company in the world has done this shows how important authenticity is.”

Launched in May 2019, SafeTix uses a barcode that changes every few seconds,

6 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

meaning it can’t be copied or screenshotted.

Fans can transfer tickets to friends or family using mobile phone numbers or an email address. A new digital ticket is tied to the recipient’s account and phone, each time a ticket is transferred or sold, making the journey of each ticket visible to organisers.

Of course, knowing who all the attendees are provides venues and companies with a rich source of data – an opportunity to track what experiences are valuable to any given consumer.

Generation Z is more comfortable with being tracked in exchange for a fast service, says Andersen. “They know they leave a digital footprint, but they want information right in their hand and they want it immediately.

They understand they’re being tracked and they’re okay with it because they get served options and they’re all about options.”

She points to statistics showing that in Las Vegas while 68% of visitors attend a show or event, two thirds of them decide what to see after their arrival, and 60% of event tickets are sold within 72 hours of event.

“This is because people are waiting to look at all the options that are fed to them before they make a decision. They’re in the moment.

It’s only the older generation that’s worried about being tracked.”

FEATURE TICKET TECH

Facial recognition is likely to be making an impact in the ticketing industry soon. But it’s important that consumers are ready for the technology before it’s rolled out widely.

might be interesting to the client. Similarly, if a wallet has 600 tickets in it, it’s a scalper.

“Tickets are no longer simply ‘a revocable licence to attend the event listed on the front,’ they are a personal communication hub,” says Machin. “Once you buy a ticket, you can have experiences, messaging or content delivered to your phone because the organiser knows you’re going and who you’re going with. It means the event experience can start much sooner. It’s a much deeper relationship but that requires greater responsibility not to impinge on people’s privacy and data.”

MY FACE IS MY TICKET

“FACIAL RECOGNITION WILL BE ABLE TO CREATE SOME REALLY COMPELLING EXPERIENCES.” JUSTIN BURLEIGH, TICKETMASTER Nonetheless, we are moving towards a world where consumers will have more control over their data. That will affect not just the ticketing industry but all sectors of public-facing commerce, from the motor industry to travel.

“This means we will need to be able to deliver hyper-relevant services to individuals even when you don’t know who they are,” says Machin. “You’ll be tracking behaviour in an anonymised way. This is one of the benefits of blockchain.”

FanDragon’s ticket-wallet feature means while the person owning the wallet remains anonymous, their behaviour can be analysed.

For example, if a wallet buys tickets every time a certain artist comes to their town, but suddenly stops, that sort of information

Using your face to unlock a smartphone has been commonplace since Apple launched FaceID in 2017 (other earlier phones used facial recognition but it could be easily hacked). But when Live Nation Entertainment invested in biometric company Blink Identity in 2018, the prospect of being able to walk into a venue without needing to get your phone or paper ticket out took a step closer to becoming reality.

Justin Burleigh, LNE-owned Ticketmaster’s global chief product officer says: “We didn’t want to have a database of millions of customers’ faces, so instead this technology uses the same mechanism as the facial recognition tech that unlocks many smartphones. By scanning a face and converting that information into code, it negates the need for storing images of people’s faces.

“Facial recognition will be able to create some really compelling experiences for backstage, or VIP personnel control. For example, if you’re carrying some beers and food it will mean you don’t have to reach into your pocket for your phone or ticket to gain access.”

However, he adds: “We have a lot more to do in the lab before this gets rolled out. We want to get it right because we know if we get it wrong we won’t be given a second chance.”

It’s not just the world’s biggest ticketing company that’s interested in the technology.

Former Ticketmaster CEO and later head of commerce at Twitter, Nathan Hubbard, recently announced a facial recognitionpowered ticketing platform of his own, Rival. Its first client is Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, owner of Denver’s Pepsi Center (20,000-cap), although migrating from AXS had some teething problems.

And while there may be what Machin calls some “ickiness” around the idea of facial recognition at music events at the moment, the technology’s use at airport security is commonplace. And as people become more comfortable with it in this context, that will smooth the path for its arrival in entertainment.

ENHANCED REAL LIFE

Augmented reality is becoming increasingly sophisticated and more common in live

entertainment, so how will the ticketing industry respond to that? Andersen reckons the answer will be driven by how much consumers want to buy into these things and what they want to experience.

“Whereas a 50 year old might want to come into a venue and sit down, buy a hot dog and watch the show, somebody younger wants to engage with technology that recognises them as an individual. You could be watching the game from your seat but also see it from the players’ perspective by looking at your device.”

Other examples include creating 3D virtual venue models that can be expanded using AR. This could mean being able to see a model of the venue before you go to a show and finding out where everything is, as well as seeing sponsorship activations, and even connecting it to a Facebook account to see where your friends are sitting. You could find out where the bar queues are shortest, or where to get your favourite pretzel.

LOOKING FORWARD

That’s the present situation. But what nascent tech or business models might we see in the near future?

Ticketmaster’s Burleigh says he is excited to see new hardware come online, such as more powerful NFC tech, which would mean people don’t have to take their phone out of their pockets to scan on entry. He would also like to see more powerful cashless opportunities across venues.

Andersen suggests a subscription-based model could have potential in the future.

“Like a Netflix model, where you buy something today and have access to it later – for example, if you want to go to a big game or playoff you can get access to early booking because you’ve paid a subscription.”

It’s not without precedent. In the cinema industry, MoviePass allowed people to go see films for a monthly subscription fee. Currently, the venture is in difficulty as the company behind it struggles to control its cash burn.

However, US cinema chains AMC Theatres and Cinemark are also running subscription models with some success. AMC’s programme, which allows customers to see three movies a week for $19.95 a month, has over 900,000 subscribers. Could that model be transferred to live? While it’s unlikely to work for the largest companies and artists, it could be more viable for grass-roots-level venues and promoters.

Whatever the future holds, Chambers predicts that the fragmented nature of all the options means there will need to be open-API schemes to ensure that a seamless customer delivery service is provided: multiple back-ends but unified consumer experience.

“This is increasingly evident in [London’s] West End theatre or with the NFL ticket retail and distribution agreements, and will inevitably spread to other sectors and territories to become much more commonplace,” he says.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 7

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8 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

FEATURE INNOVATORS

Technology and ticketing go hand-in-hand, and there are many companies out there offering innovative solutions to make the industry better. We hear from some of the companies helping drive up revenues for live entertainment, and safeguard fans from touts and fraud.

THE INNOVATORS INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 9

FEATURE INNOVATORS

OXYNADE The white-label ticketing partner offers an all-round system that includes a fully equipped back office, box office and specialised features covering a broad range of verticals, meaning ticketing companies don’t need to take on the cost and resources of setting up their own platform. The company’s eTicketing as a service (eTaaS)

solution launched in 2017 and already has a global clientele.

Recently the Belgium-based company has invested heavily in improving its offer from an UI and UX perspective, with clear flows for ticket-buyers. It has also updated its API integration to enable clients to use their own Payment Service Provider (PSP). This means people can not only pay using their preferred PSP, but ticketers can offer bundles such as

merch, food coupons or travel services, which can drive up revenues. Furthermore, the upgraded API offers ticket-buyers the opportunity to complete purchases using other forms of payment, such as gift vouchers, pre-charged cards or even ‘event currency’.

In September 2018, the firm launched its inaugural eTaaS Summit in Germany, which drew almost 50 delegates from 14 countries for networking and insightful panels. The event will take place again in April 2020, with a new approach. “We want to go really in-depth,” says company spokesperson Hannah Coekaerts. “We’re inviting international clients and top-notch speakers.”

TIXSERVE

Oxynade’s eTicketing as a Service has clients worldwide.

The B2B, Software-as-a-Service, white-label, ticket fulfilment company enables its clients to deliver secure digital tickets to their customers’ mobile phones.

Tixserve launched in the UK in 2017, and managing director Patrick Kirby says that its focus on solving problems for clients and doing trials with potential clients is now delivering strong growth for the company.

In April 2019, the company announced a

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FEATURE INNOVATORS

Tixserve managing director Patrick Kirby.

partnership with UK entertainment retailer HMV to help with its diversification into live events. Tixserve worked with HMV to deliver signing sessions with US band Twenty One Pilots at six stores. The events took place during the UK leg of the band’s Bandito tour and were fully digitally ticketed. Passes were sold by HMV as part of a bundle with the band’s fifth album, Trench.

In the run-up to the events, touts were advertising yet-to-be-activated Tixserve tickets online for up to £200 – a mark-up of more than 1000% on the album/ticket bundle. When fans alerted HMV of these cases, organisers were able to disable all ticket transfer functionality, unless authorised, on a case-by-case basis, by using Tixserve’s technology.

In July 2019, Tixserve announced a multiyear agreement with the Rugby Football Union (RFU) for the provision of secure digital ticket delivery services for Twickenham Stadium, the home of England Rugby. The competitive tendering process involved extensive trials with full system testing at numerous events to validate the Tixserve digital ticket fulfilment solution, which included the ability to operate with the existing infrastructure at Twickenham Stadium provided by Ticketmaster and Fortress.

Kirby said: “We are delighted to have secured such a prestigious flagship client as the RFU, especially after such an exhaustive tender process. The close working relationship developed means that we can provide the best secure digital ticketing solution for the RFU and its clubs, sponsors and supporters, as well as concert promoters and music fans who also use the stadium.”

He added: “Tixserve will be announcing a number of other high-profile client deals in the second half of 2019, in the music, theatre, and sports segments of the live events market. We are excited by the scale of opportunity of working with the RFU and the momentum of this success has already opened up business development opportunities for Tixserve not just in the UK and Ireland but in Europe, the USA and Asia.”

Market interest in digital ticketing has significantly increased over the last 12 months, to the extent that Tixserve is now

FEATURE INNOVATORS

Tixserve ticketed HMV’s in-store signing sessions for Twenty One Pilots. The digital tickets meant the firm could prevent them being transferred, to stop touts.

WHEN FANS ALERTED HMV, ORGANISERS WERE ABLE TO DISABLE ALL TICKET TRANSFER FUNCTIONALITY, UNLESS AUTHORISED, ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS,

BY USING TIXSERVE’S TECHNOLOGY handling a large volume of inbound enquiries from potential clients. Kirby says: “We are not in the business of selling ‘technology’ to clients but instead we focus on understanding the needs of potential clients and solving their business problems with a software platform that uses proven, high-performance and cost-effective enabling technologies.”

He also cautions against the hype associated with many start-up, technologyled companies setting out to ‘disrupt’ an industry such as the live event ticketing sector. “Tixserve’s mission is to add value to the live events industry by enabling its clients to gain business benefits from the

adoption of digital ticketing including convenience for customers, security, authorised ticket exchange, lower costs, ‘know your customer’ data capture, and new digital commerce revenue streams that have the potential to transform the ticket into a profit centre.”

PROTECT GROUP Protect Group provides innovative event cancellation protection and refund protection to all sizes and types of ticketing companies, platforms, events, venues, sports teams and more.

“We developed our solutions to not only

12 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

provide the broadest and most comprehensive protection to our members and their ticket buyers, but also to generate new revenue streams to tackle rising costs and reduced margins for events,” says Ben Lenighan, head of commercial partnerships at Protect Group.

Protect Group first experienced success with Event Protect, their event cancellation protection, which was primarily for ticketing companies but also allowed organisers to reduce their financial risk and be assured their events were protected. This was due to increasing cancellation risks globally, as well as demand for a quicker and a more cost-effective insurance solution of this type.

Soon after, Refund Protect was created after the company saw the chance to create a more consumer-centric refund protection product for ticketing companies.

Ticketing companies integrate Event Protect and Refund Protect via a simple API, which allows sales transactions to be underwritten by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Tokio Marine HCC and Swiss Re – three of the largest insurance providers.

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- ADVERTORIAL New innovations on the horizon

WHAT’S ENTERPRISE SAAS? Anyone of us currently uses Software as a Service (SaaS) on a daily basis. Look at Docusign, Office 365, and all the Google apps. Statistics show that the SaaS business is increasing at a rate of 11% per year. The revenue in 2020 will already be 132 billion dollars. However, does this trend also resonates in the ticketing business? Moreover, if so, what’s the impact?

H

ans Nissens, Founder and CEO of Oxynade, explains: “There already are SaaS companies in our industry, but the possibilities are far greater than what is out there right now.

We conducted a survey to measure how many companies in the Ticketing Industry use SaaS. The results showed that the Global SaaS Index in our industry is solely 40%, while SaaS can offer an answer to a lot of the challenges that ticketing companies have to face.

The market is continuously demanding the best and the newest of the ticketing platforms (mobile, social, enhanced customer experience, self-service possibilities, full cloud, etc), putting a tremendous amount of pressure on resources and budget.

The need for the latest, innovative, additional services like ticket-exchange, analytic tools, queuing, and many more arises. Building these services yourself is almost impossible, and connecting to existing solutions is quite a hassle as well.

To solve these specific challenges, we’ve created the Enterprise SaaS Ticketing Platform. A regular SaaS ticketing platform can be the perfect solution for organisers and smaller venues. Enterprise SaaS is the solution for larger ticketing organisations like ticketing agencies, big venues, or mayor event organisers. It ads many additional functionalities and was developed for their specific needs.

With an open API architecture, it is possible to connect to external tools and systems efficiently.

The core of the Enterprise SaaS solution has to be designed to be 100% white label. The ticketing agency must be able to use their branding without any limitations.That means that their own brand is visible in every single message of the entire communication process.

The white label architecture and an optimised usability should always go hand in hand. A sophisticated solution that’s too hard to configure won’t comply with today’s standards.

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FEATURE INNOVATORS

Protect Group says this means events and attendees have the best protection in place without admin work required from the organiser and/or ticketing company and with no upfront costs.

Since inception Protect Group says it has underwritten millions of transactions, handling the entire refund process for ticketing companies and events.

Lenighan continues, “The key is to refund attendees quickly and transparently, either if the event cancels or if the attendee themselves cannot attend the event due to unforeseen cir-cumstances. We do this within seven days, with an average refund time globally of four days, to ensure that attendees are kept satisfied and negative social media impact is re-duced.”

Based in Leeds, UK, Protect Group has members in over 25 different countries. It is opening international business hubs in North America, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Oceania as part of a global expansion resulting from an increase in demand.

ACTIVITY STREAM The aim of Activity Stream is to make data accessible and valuable to the layman, so people can understand important information relating to ticket sales without needing a data science qualification.

When it comes to analysing data, most organisations are left with two choices: working manually with reporting tools and making lists and reports in Excel, or (for the major organisations only) investing in building your own data warehouse combining data from multiple sources. But that’s a multiyear project, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and takes up key resources.

“OUR AI IS TRAINED ON MULTIPLE DATA SETS RATHER THAN SOLELY BASED ON THE ONE ORGANISATION’S IT’S PLUGGED INTO, SO IT’S ABLE TO HELP PEOPLE STRAIGHT AWAY” MARTIN GAMMELTOFT, ACTIVITY STREAM “We launched the company based on a middle way, a model of SaaS,” says Martin Gammeltoft. “We used AI, cluster analysis and weak-pattern recognition that you wouldn’t get by working in Excel, and built an AI model to predict ticket sales.

“Our AI is trained on multiple data sets rather than solely based on the one organisation’s it’s plugged into, so it’s able to help people straight away.

“It looks at things like whether some categories are moving faster than others, are you attracting lots of first-time buyers to specific events; it combines the ticket sales information and the digital side of things so you can look at the effect of campaigns. You can see ticket sales in real time but also see where they are coming from – whether it’s a Facebook campaign or mail-out or from one of your partners.”

The resulting easy-to-understand platform gives powerful insights that help improve marketing, planning, saves time and improves revenues, says Gammeltoft.

“The nature of AI is that you can train the model on data sets, and then transfer the learning to other organisations. So you never see a competitor’s data or use it, but the AI has learned from many sets. It’s like someone who has 40 years’ experience in the industry at 16 different venues – they can’t specifically email one person, but they apply their

Activity Stream’s easy-to-understand platform is based on sophisticated and powerful AI.

knowledge to their latest job. The AI learns from patterns but it’s not bringing specific consumers’ information or sales or events.

“It can tell you things like 92% of your Facebook sales are a particular demographic, so maybe you need to adjust that, or that a particular high-value customer hasn’t bought a ticket in 16 months but has suddenly come back.”

Gammeltoft, who has a background in economics, believes these AI-assisted insights will have a profound effect on the industry because they can identify things a human might not notice.

Clients include AXS, The Shubert Organization and London’s Barbican Centre.

QUEUE-IT With offices in Minneapolis and Copenhagen, virtual waiting room tech firm Queue-it enables ticketing organisations, including Ticketmaster and AXS, to handle heavy traffic loads at peak on-sale times by queuing them and then passing them back to the website in a first-come, first-served order.

CEO Niels Henrik Sodemann says his firm has recently been focused on a problem where two points of legislation are clashing: the moves by governments in the EU, Australia and the USA to ban the use of bots to acquire tickets; and increasing moves towards privacy online.

“The ability of those who want to catch the touts in the act of illegally using bots is being hampered by privacy solutions,” he explains. “To be able to prosecute the people using bots you need to be able to identify them, but the world is increasingly legislating towards more privacy online.”

Sodemann says Queue-it’s latest innovation is solving the issue of touts acquiring tickets by using thousands of different IP addresses.

“Previously, we would match IP addresses with behaviour patterns and try to identify the scalpers that way,” he says. But now they are rolling out a service that requires ticket-buyers to enter unique identifier information from the physical world before being allowed into the queue, and then verify the information before they get to checkout.

“This makes it considerably harder for the bad actors,” says Sodemann, “Plus, it resolves the issue of contradicting pieces of legislation around bots and privacy.”

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 15

FEATURE INNOVATORS

TICKETLINE Another company which is investing in fan-to-fan resale is Ticketline, whose Fanticks platform enables people to sell unwanted or spare tickets, and boasts the guarantee that all tickets are inspected and verified before publication to ensure they are genuine and are being listed and promoted fairly.

“This delivers substantial confidence to both the buyer and seller, ensuring the seller gets paid, and the buyer obtains their ticket at a sensible or ethical price,” says spokesman James Lee. Tickets sold and distributed by Ticketline can be listed on Fanticks, and from all other ticket agents. Listings are qualified against various factors to ensure their legitimacy prior to being made available to the general public.

“Since launch in May 2019, Fanticks has received a very warm and positive reception from our customers, who are already exchanging tickets on Fanticks and listing their tickets at face value or less. Thousands of customers have already purchased tickets and obtained access to sold-out events, while sellers are not left out of pocket.”

Lee says 2019 has also seen the growth of the company’s rep sales system, The Ticket Network. It drives organic growth of ticket sales through an additional sales channel by taking advantage of the promotional and exposure opportunities of social influencers, and online and off line street teams.

“It also allows our existing clients to grab their loyal fans and give them an opportunity to become a true voice and ambassador for their brand,” says Lee. The concept is simple: the more a rep sells, the more rewards they can obtain to

redeem against tickets, merchandise, VIP or experiences money can’t buy.

The platform is fully customisable and can be adapted for individual clients to cater to their specific demands. All tickets sold through The Ticket Network are integrated into Ticketline’s existing solutions and are compatible with its access control system, reporting and other ticketing tools.

TICKETPLAN Leading ticket insurance and protection provider TicketPlan, which provides refunds to ticket buyers if they are unable to attend events due to a variety of unforeseen circumstances, has continued to build on last year’s success.

Having partnered with Global insurance giant APRIL International last year in order to bring its ticket insurance solutions to North America, the company announced its first US launch at the beginning of 2019 and further extended the partnership to include Europe.

“We were delighted to launch our first client in the US, MissionTix, earlier this year, and we have a number of exciting ongoing discussions and further North American launches in the pipeline,” explains group development director, Ben Bray.

“With Brexit looming and causing uncertainty for companies wishing to trade in the EU going forwards, it was a logical next step for us to extend our partnership with APRIL into Europe. This enabled us to successfully launch with leading French ticketing company Digitick at the beginning of the summer.”

Having unveiled a new GDPR-friendly, API-based, integration solution last year, Bray confirms that this has been successfully

Ticketline’s Fanticks has received a warm welcome from customers.

16 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

launched with TicketPlan’s client base.

“The key with all of our solutions is that they must be easy to implement so that our partner ticketing companies can offer ticket insurance and generate additional revenue from these solutions as quickly as possible.

We know that not all systems are the same and that’s why it’s been a real asset to not only have an API-based solution (which one of our clients successfully integrated within a couple of weeks earlier this year) but also to have a non-integrated implementation solution, which has actually been the preferred route to launch for a large number of our clients.

“We tailor our solutions to suit our clients’ needs, and offering flexibility in pricing and coverage, and indeed in terms of how our solutions are implemented, has been at the heart of what we do during our 20 years in the ticket insurance and protection sector.”

GIGANTIC UK-based Gigantic is one of the country’s largest independent ticket agencies, and has sold more than 2million passes.

The company is preparing to release its fan-to-fan resale platform. MD Mark Gasson explains: “Currently, we are in the beta phase, with the product available for selected events, however, full integration will be coming soon.”

It is also working on a new website, with improved UX, across all devices. “The emphasis is on helping our customers get their tickets quickly and efficiently, with better event- and artist-discovery functionality,” says Gasson.

“We are also keen to increase our fulfilment options for customers and promoters. Fewer people have access to

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FEATURE INNOVATORS

printers for a print-at-home ticket option, and on top of that, the environmental impact is pushing us towards developments in mobile ticketing. Having tickets sit within an app is what the ticketing industry is moving towards,” he says.

“However, a barrier to this is limitations with venues’ scanning technologies. A large number of venues do not open their tech to allow third-party agents’ mobile tickets to be scanned, meaning that we are having to send physical tickets. Whereas, our scanning app, Gigscan, allows venues and promoters to scan mobile tickets.”

Ticketmaster’s SafeTix not only combats fraud, but provides better understanding of who’s coming to the event.

THE TICKET FACTORY Feedback from thousands of customers was at the heart of a brand-new website for UK ticket agency, The Ticket Factory.

The site now boasts an interactive seat map and an overall quicker and easier ticket-buying experience.

Through integrating distribution system Ingresso into the website, The Ticket Factory is now able to offer thousands more tickets to events such as high-profile West End shows such as Mamma Mia, Lion King and Matilda the Musical.

The company’s pick-a-seat function works across desktop, tablet and mobile. It works dynamically and in real time, so customers can find the best seats available. Head of marketing Steven Waller says user testing has already seen a “marked increase” in customer satisfaction and a 16% increase in revenue.

Forthcoming functionality includes the option for customers to add additional services to their basket alongside their tickets, such as parking, hotel accommodation and train travel.

Waller said: “We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to deliver with our new website, which has been built to enhance The Ticket Factory customer journey even further. Each new feature is based on a wealth of customer feedback – from user testing showing us the kind of tickets people were searching for and would like to see more of, to the customers who fed back to tell us that they’d like to pick their own seat.

“We’re looking forward to hearing what our customers think of the new site over the coming months.”

The official box office for the NEC, Arena Birmingham and Resorts World Arena, The Ticket Factory sells some 2.5m tickets a year.

TICKETMASTER The world’s largest ticketing company launched SafeTix in May 2019. The technology uses a unique, identifiable digital ticket allocated to each fan’s mobile phone through an encrypted barcode that automatically refreshes every few seconds. The tickets also include near-field communication (NFC)

technology that allows fans to enter venues through a simple “tap and go” experience at venue entrances.

Ticketmaster’s global chief product officer Justin Burleigh says, “Even as we made the transition to digital, we still needed to push one more barrier: tying ticketing to a fan’s identity in order to counteract fraud and other things inherent to paper ticketing.

“Before we started this journey, we were lucky if we knew about one in five fans coming to a venue, because the nature of paper tickets is you might have one person buying tickets for a group of their friends, which meant whether you’re a band or artist or sports team, you never had the opportunity to have a conversation with all those people – only the buyer.

“We also noticed that tickets change hands on average three times between purchase and attendance, and as many as five times. That’s approaching Kevin-Bacon degrees of separation between the purchaser and the attendee.”

He adds: “For our clients it’s about chain of custody. A ticket-buyer can still sell their ticket, but the only way it can be transferred from one person to another is digitally, and you can’t do that anonymously.”

The NFC-based ticket has no barcode – instead it’s contactless, in a similar way to using ApplePay for a coffee at Starbucks.

Burleigh says the ticket will be in your phone’s wallet, and has the same level of encryption as credit cards.

He says the technology doesn’t allow access to private information or other details stored on a phone, and is fully GDPR and CCPA

18 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

(California Consumer Privacy Act) compliant.

“We’ve not changed the paradigm of how you opt-in to communications from us.”

This year, SafeTix will go live across 30 NFL teams, and it’s planned for international rollout from 2020.

TICKETS.IE It’s been another year of growth and innovation for leading Irish independent ticketing provider Tickets.ie, which has recently launched a fan experience tech brand, Tixcel.

Fifteen years of ticketing experience has been channelled into a suite of platforms under the Tixcel brand, including new pricing preference platform, SeatFair.

SeatFair is a bid-based open market where fans determine ticket pricing.

Removing the fevered pressure of a single on-sale moment for an event, fans can place considered single or multiple ranked bids for their preferred seats; reflecting their desire for the event, where they want to sit and how much they are willing to pay.

SeatFair’s intelligent algorithm dynamically optimises all the bids while the market is open, factoring in floor and ceiling limits for each seat – if the promoter so chooses – to maximise the overall revenue.

The software’s open architecture means it easily integrates with existing ticketing systems.

The three goals driving the design of the platform are “simply to connect the fan with the experience they love most; faster, smarter and more fairly,” says Tickets.ie and Tixcel CEO John O’Neill.

FEATURE INNOVATORS

SeatFair is a bid-based open market where fans determine ticket pricing.

“IMAGINE IF THE TEENAGE CANCER TRUST SHOWS AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL WERE PRICED THROUGH SEATFAIR – EVERY PENNY OF THE REVENUE THAT FANS WOULD BE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEIR SEATS WOULD GO DIRECTLY TO THE CAUSE, AND NOT INTO THE ACCOUNTS OF THE TOUTS” GINA MALDE, HEAD OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, TIXCEL “At present, no effective way exists to establish the true market value of each ticket – its optimal price – which makes it impossible to maximise ticketing revenue effectively,” says Tixcel’s head of business development, Gina Malde. “The traditional pricing methodology has allowed a secondary market to flourish, gorging off that difference between the face value and the market value.

“At the same time, seats can remain unsold because they have been priced above their market value, resulting in unfilled capacity and, therefore, reduced ancillary revenue.

“Imagine if, for example, the Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Royal Albert Hall were priced through SeatFair – every penny of the revenue that fans would be willing to pay for their seats would go directly to the cause, and not into the accounts of the touts.”

FANDRAGON TECHNOLOGIES Officially announced in July (following nearly a year in stealth mode), FanDragon Technologies

provides innovative, secure, mobile-ticket delivery solutions. It uses a SaaS platform powered by the Aventus Blockchain Protocol to combat fraud and scalping while enabling rights-holders to better understand and engage event attendees.

FanDragon’s Secure Ticket Sync and Secure Ticket Transfer tech ensures ticket authenticity by using in-app mobile delivery of tickets. It means rights-holders can have greater control over their tickets, such as setting rules for transfer, plus understand the entire ticket journey from purchase through transfer to being redeemed at the venue. These insights provide a richer source of data through which deeper understanding of audiences can be gained. For example, understanding buyer and attendee behaviour or evaluating the success of com-mercial offers and their timings.

Using the proprietary FanDragon message centre, the ticket-seller or promoter can com-municate directly with ticketholders before, during and after the event, improving the fan experience and unlocking additional revenue streams.

FanDragon’s toolset can be adopted by every type of workflow, from ticketing companies aiming to use the turnkey

Software Development Kit (SDK) to integrate ticket delivery func-tionality into their existing ticket stack, all the way to event organisers wanting to deliver tickets independently across markets. Cost-effective native SDKs minimise time to market and follow the latest standards across iOS and Android mobile platforms.

“We don’t sell tickets, we deliver them,” explains global director of ticketing strategy and innovation, Steve Machin. “Our mission at FanDragon is to improve the overall fan experi-ence by being hyper-focused on an enhanced delivery service – from the moment a person receives a digital ticket, to their time at a concert or game, to post-event engagement. By seamlessly integrating our secure solutions into existing apps and infrastructure, ticket rights-holders can create a more secure and intuitive ticketed experience. In addition to pro-tecting attendees by mitigating issues with fraudulent tickets, our solutions go a step fur-ther to uncover valuable audience insights that can be used to deliver custom offers or communications – ultimately driving fan loyalty and boosting revenue for venues and talent alike.”

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 19

FEATURE MARKET CONSOLIDATION

CTS Eventim’s plans to acquire a significant stake in France Billet – the ticketing subsidiary of retail giant Fnac Darty – is the most recent example of a trend of consolidation in the ticketing industry. James Drury explores the impact of some of the critical deals.

T

he past 12 months have seen big-money deals by global firms who have been expanding their reach through buying up existing companies.

Eventim’s major expansion into the €800million French live music market will see it establish a joint venture with the retailer by the end of 2019. Under the proposed new structure, Eventim would acquire 48% of France Billet, with an option

to increase its holding to a majority stake over the next four years. It is folding its Eventim French business into the partnership, and the established brands – which in addition to Francebillet.com include Fnacspectacles.com and Billetreduc.com – will remain in operation.

This move will be a blow for Parisheadquartered multimedia conglomeration Vivendi, which owns the local company Digitick and was the third-largest competitor behind France Billet and Ticketmaster.

20 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Leapfrogging its rivals, Eventim has secured the top position in the ticketing space.

However, it currently does not have a promoter presence in France, unlike Live Nation or Vivendi, the latter of which owns the venues L’Olympia (1,996-cap) and Theâtre de L’Œuvre (326-cap) in Paris, as well as Olympia Production, the operator of a number of French festivals including Les Déferlantes (12,000-cap) and Garorock (45,000-cap).

In 2017-18, Eventim bought three significant promoters in Italy – Vertigo, Friends & Partners, and D’Alessandro e Galli (Di and Gi) – solidifying its brand TicketOne as the dominant ticketer in the country after Ticketmaster opened operations there in 2017.

On the other side of the world, Live Nation Entertainment’s (LNE) $480m (€433m) decision to buy a 51% stake in Ocesa Entertainment,

© WESLEY ALLEN / ROCK IN RIO

Live Nation acquired flagship festival Rock in Rio last year.

Coupled with its move into Mexico this year, could this be the start of a Latin American acquisition spree?

the largest promoter in Latin America, and owner of Ticketmaster Mexico, is noteworthy.

Promoting about 3,100 shows a year, Ocesa reportedly sold 3.8m tickets in 2018.

Ticketmaster Mexico is comfortably the country’s biggest ticket seller, with around 37m tickets sold each year.

While LNE and Ocesa have had a long partnership through touring, festivals and the Ticketmaster brand, this move significantly enhances the global entertainment company’s footprint.

It demonstrates LNE’s growing confidence in the Latin American market and will likely lead to an increasing number of tours by international talent to the continent, and potentially further acquisitions of promoters, ticketing companies or venues.

What impact it will have on Ticketmaster

in the US, where the second language is Spanish, remains to be seen. The Spanishlanguage market in the US is arguably currently underserved, and this could be seen as an internal growth opportunity for the global behemoth.

But more importantly, this could be part of a wider move by LNE into Latin America, where the firm historically has no major presence. Last year it acquired one of Argentina’s top promoters, DF Entertainment, while earlier in 2018, it took a controlling stake in one of the largest music festivals in the world, Rock in Rio (100,000-cap), which could be a sign that Ticketmaster is preparing to make a move into Brazil. Does this indicate a strategy of expansion across the region? We’ll have to wait and see.

LNE-owned Ticketmaster also bought

Australia and New Zealand’s most significant independent ticketing company, Moshtix, in February, further expanding its presence in a market where it competes fiercely with TEG’s Ticketek.

Although it’s not likely to shift the balance of power, Ticketmaster’s move will add another indie brand to its suite of ticketing platforms.

Meanwhile, TEG grew its Asian reach by buying the Philippines-based ticketing company TicketWorld. This adds to its existing interests in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau. As well as major international tours by the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Katy Perry, TicketWorld has a strong presence in the local theatre market, and provides ticket services to Philippines’ venues including Solaire Resort and Casino, Resorts World Manila, BGC Arts Center and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

“We see great opportunities in many Asian markets and our strategy puts us on course to becoming a truly pan-Asian promoter,” said TEG CEO Geoff Jones at the time.

While not strictly new acquisitions, DEAG continued its policy of wholly owning companies by completing the purchase of the MyTicket platform, which going forward will be powered by the Secutix SaaS solution, while Eventim completed its takeover of German online movie ticketing platform Kinoheld and Scandinavian ticketing solution Venuepoint.

So what’s next? In the fast-moving world of ticketing, it’s hard to say.

India’s BookMyShow sells some 20m tickets a month, mainly in the cinema sector, but is looking to grow further into live entertainment. In 2018, COO of non-films at BookMyShow Albert Almeida told The Economic Times the firm wants to increase its revenues from non-cinema events from 30% to 50% by 2020.

It is one of the ticketing partners at the newly opened Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai and is addressing a lack of infrastructure in its home country by building its touring venues and producing its own shows. At a recent fundraising round, the company was valued at $1billion (€0.9bn), and there is still huge potential in the country of 1.3bn people. But maybe it will look to acquire in new markets, or further consolidate its position in the Middle East.

Another interesting area is the growing trend of Chinese companies taking an interest in Western music companies (for example, Tencent acquired a 10% stake in Universal Music, with an option to take another 10% in a year). Could we see a Chinese firm take an interest in a ticketing company outside of its homeland?

What we can say is that the last 12 months have seen no sign of the trend for consolidation slowing down – and it may just be hotting up even further.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 21

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

ARGENTINA LANGUAGE SPANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 44.6 CURRENCY PESO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 20,900 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 30.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 55 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 15.3 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 39.4 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 9 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 11

Paul McCartney played the Polo Ground Buenos Aires, ticketed by Ticketek.

T

he Argentinian economy continues to go through a bewildering long-term cycle of debt defaults and currency devaluations. But in spite of the country’s volatile economic climate, it remains South America’s second most important live market, after Brazil. This year has seen DF Entertainment/C3 Presents’ sixth Lollapalooza at the Hipódromo de Dan Isidro in March, as well as a reasonable flow of international and local artists.

PRIMARY TICKETING To varying degrees, leading promoters in Argentina invariably have a sideline in ticketing. Thus market leader Ticketek is the sister company of T4F Argentina, while other leading promoters DF Entertainment and Move Concerts operate their own ticketing platforms, All Access and Live Pass, respectively.

Ticketek, however, has by far the broadest offering in the market, with a large number of sporting events, musicals and concerts, and a market share it estimates at about 50%.

“This is a very strange year in Argentina,” says Fernando Bolan, director of Ticketek and T4F. “The economy has been very difficult and we have a presidential election in October. In spite of that, I feel that some events have been better.”

Other ticketers include TuEntrada.com, TopShow and VisionOne, Argentina’s TicketPortal. All Access owner DF Entertainment, which sold more than 500,000 tickets for its concerts and festivals in 2018, was acquired at the end of last year by Live Nation.

by 2018, and though the market has certainly stayed alive during recent rocky periods, the size of the market in practice is hard to ascertain.

SECONDARY TICKETING The local resale site is EntradaFan; Viagogo is also in evidence.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The currency conditions don’t necessarily make things easy for incoming international tours, but this year Buenos Aires welcomed Shawn Mendes, Iron Maiden, Dido, Slayer, Seal and Muse, as well as local stars including Ciro y los Persas, Las Pastillas del Abuelo and Luciano Pereyra. Roger Waters specialises in filling Argentinian stadiums, and did it again twice in November 2018 at Estadio Único.

Local singer-songwriter Abel Pintos and the free, three-day, Argentinian hip-hop event Festival Provincia Emergente have done likewise in recent months, while Paul McCartney brought his Freshen Up tour to the Campo Argentino de Polo in March.

Argentina is traditionally a rock nation, but its homegrown trap scene has exploded in the past year or two, rising out of troubled times in the same way the country’s cumbia villera movement did during the 2001 financial crisis. Popular traperos include indie artist Duki, who sold out the 10,000-capacity Luna Park with no mainstream promotion last year, working-class rapper Malajunta Malandro, feminist icon Cazzu and Córdoban star Paulo Londra.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Online is the most popular channel nowadays, though call centres are still available and there are some physical outlets remaining in cities.

Ticketek launched an e-ticket in 2017 and is about to launch a new website with additional features.

VALUE OF MARKET Figures are scarce for the Argentinian live music market. In 2014, PwC projected that live music revenue would rise to $85million (€75m)

22 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Argentina’s inflation rate was projected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to average out at 34% in 2019.

That would count as a slowdown after 47% in 2018. Argentina was hit by two major currency crashes in 2018 and has been in recession this year, though the mood at the time of writing was one of cautious positivity.

TAXES & CHARGES Argentina abandoned its 21% VAT on concert tickets in 2006 and they remain exempt.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

AUSTRALIA LANGUAGE ENGLISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 24.7 CURRENCY DOLLAR GDP/CAPITA (US$) 50,300 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 20.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 90 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 12.8 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 41.4 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 481 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 510

L

ockouts, pill testing, a “ban” on festivals, scalping, consolidation, a diving dollar… Australia’s live scene has never been short of drama, and those working in the sector have seen their fair share of it over the past year. Still, the industry continues to impress and there’s evidence to suggest more Australians are attending shows than ever before.

According to Live Performance Australia’s Ticket Attendance and Revenue Report, more than 23 million Australians attended live events in 2017, a “record-breaking year,” says the trade body’s CEO Evelyn Richardson. For some context, that means almost every single Australian man, woman and child went to a show during the period.

The summer of 2019 and 2020 will see Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour (for Chugg Entertainment) and U2 set to play their Joshua Tree album in full in stadiums around the country (for Live Nation).

The international shows keep coming, with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac, Maroon 5, John Mayer (all LN); Michael Bublé

and Queen (both TEG Dainty); A-ha (Frontier Touring) and many others due to make the long haul.

The festival space is no place for the faint-hearted, particular for those operating in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state. On March 1, the state’s premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and her Liberal government activated a tough licensing regime in response to a spate of drug-related deaths at music festivals (those fatalities were explored in a coronial inquest, held in July). The live industry warned the restrictions were heavy-handed and created without adequate consultation. The situation was dubbed a “war on festivals,” one which contributed to the collapse of Psyfari and Mountain Sounds festivals, and potentially others.

The newly formed Australian Festival Association called the rollout of these new policies a “fiasco,” “chaotic” and a “farce.” Thousands protested the new restrictions at a Don’t Kill Live Music rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park back in February 2019. “It’s a fucking nightmare,” said veteran,

© CLAUDIA CIAPOCHA

Live Nation’s Download festival expanded to Sydney this year and there are plans for further growth next year.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 23

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES AUSTRALIA

Sydney-based promoter Michael Chugg, of the government’s intervention. Expect the dialogue to heat up once more during the warmer, summer months.

With Australia’s four biggest touring fests being wiped from the calendar in recent times (Big Day Out, Future Music Festival, Soundwave, Stereosonic), many pundits figured the traveling festival was consigned to history. Not so. Live Nation’s Download Festival launched in Melbourne in 2018, and returned in 2019 with an extra, Sydney leg. LN has hinted at a third destination. Rock fans had a lot to bang their heads to when the inaugural Good Things Festival rolled out across the three largest eastern Australian cities in December 2018, featuring The Offspring, Stone Sour, All Time Low and more.

Download and the mid-winter Splendour in the Grass are going “from strength to strength,” says Live Nation Australasia chairman Michael Coppel. “We have had a stellar 12 months, including Pink’s hyper-successful, three-month arena tour that was seen by more than 600,000 fans, plus successful visits by Cher, Taylor Swift, Kevin Hart, Roger Waters and many more.”

The live business, says Roger Field, CEO of Live Nation Australasia, is growing on a number of fronts. “We’re seeing 12 to 14-date arena shows go through a lot more regularly. That presents a whole range of growth opportunities,” he explains.

Regional touring, boutique festivals and winery concerts are popular, and growing. “Recent sales results show that people are willing to travel,” says Ticketmaster Australia and NZ managing director Maria O’Connor, “and the growth of boutique festivals will continue to see them become a bigger part of the ticketing landscape.” Roundhouse Entertainment’s popular A Day On The Green winery concert productions launched in 2001 and will celebrate a 500th-show milestone in the 2019-20 season.

Consolidation has been a big factor in the live industry. No single deal got more attention than the reunion of Michael Gudinski and Michael Chugg, through a joint venture between their respective companies, Frontier Touring and Chugg Entertainment. “It’s a great thing. It’s an emotional thing,” Gudinski said when the partnership was announced in March. “But there’s one boss,” he says with a laugh. “There always was.” The following month, AEG Presents struck a joint venture with Frontier Touring with a 50% stake in the promoter, an arrangement that promises more opportunity for artists to tour North America and Australia. “The JV will be a benefit to the live industry and certainly gives us room for some creative packaging and line-ups,” adds Chugg.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Technology is facilitating an increasing number of transactions down under, and smartphones and tablets are the dominant platforms for all e-commerce, including ticketing. Independent ticketers say roughly 90% of their tickets are sold online (split 50/50 between personal computers and mobile devices). The remainder of sales are facilitated by phone calls (5-6%), outlets (3%), and walk-ups (1-2%).

VALUE OF MARKET All told, AU$1.88billion (€1.14bn) was generated through ticket sales across the country in 2017, according to the LPA’s most recent market report, a 32% hike from the previous year. Every state and territory generated growth in revenue and attendance, according to the data, the most recent available, with Victoria coming out on top (AU$639.9million [€388.7m] revenue from ticket sales, up 45.3%), ahead of New South Wales (AU$615.8m [€373.9m], up 16.2%).

It was a boom time for rock, pop and hip-hop concerts, which were bunched into the so-called “contemporary music” category and generated AU$826m (€502m), up 87.7%.

SECONDARY TICKETING Everyone hates Viagogo. After years of industry pressure, Google announced in July it would ban the controversial secondary ticketing platform from the prime position in search results. Australia’s live industry warmly welcomed the decision, which, says the LPA’s Richardson, was “a great outcome for Australian ticket buyers, performers and producers.” Earlier, in April, the Federal Court found Viagogo misled consumers, after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched proceedings. “There is still work to do to kill them off,” says Chugg, who notes Viagogo has “ramped up” its Facebook posts. Stubhub is another sore point, he notes.

The “bots” haven’t been shut down, but the threat has been neutralised in New South Wales and South Australia, where legislation prevents the use of automated software to buy tickets. The industry is eagerly awaiting the results of a Bill in parliament in Western Australia. A ban on bots was considered at a national level as part of the Federal Treasury review into ticket reselling, but, ultimately, decision-makers decided that more information was needed to develop an appropriate enforcement and penalty regime.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES PRIMARY TICKETING Australasia’s ticketing industry is dominated by the “big two,” Ticketmaster and Ticketek, with some 30 independent companies duking it out for a piece of the live entertainment space. Scott Morrison’s government was re-elected for another term, though the Australian currency isn’t as stable. In January, the currency fell to a decade low, creating a headache for international talent buyers. “Obviously, the dollar in both countries (Australia and New Zealand) is a problem,” said Gudinski.

The ticketing sector experienced its own blockbuster, when Moshtix, the biggest independent in the business, became part of the Live Nation/Ticketmaster empire. The relationship with Ticketmaster, says Moshtix CEO Harley Evans, “will create many more opportunities” for the business “than we were perhaps able to as a privately run operator,” citing the ticketing giant’s global affiliate relationships with the likes of Spotify, Facebook and YouTube.

From a commercial and bid perspective, “we’ll be continuing to run the business as professionally and prudently as we’ve always tried to do,” Evans continues. “We’ve never done silly deals for the sake of it, and there’s no intention to start now.”

Now, Oztix stands alone as the top independent ticketer. The growing company partnered with 500 venues on an exclusive basis and 5,000 venues non-exclusively last year. According to CEO Stuart Field, the company tickets over 1,000 events every month, with a focus on the independent music scene. “This number continues to grow each year,” says Field, who identifies a major opportunity in the space for shifting unsold inventory.

24 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

The Aussie music market is traditionally dominated by rock, pop, indie and dance music, though hip-hop is arguably more popular now than ever before, a fact underscored when Kendrick Lamar’s Humble won the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown in January 2018. Country music is finding new audiences. The 12th edition of CMC Rocks QLD, held over four days in Willowbank in March, drew an all-time high of 24,000 music fans each day. Headlined by Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett and Luke Combs, the event sold out on the first day of on-sale.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Medium- to large-sized venues tend to opt for the exclusive ticketing rights model. The ticketing rights for large venues are sold to the highest bidder or, sources say, to the one with the most influential corporate relationships. Ticketek and Ticketmaster dominate the stadium, arena and commercial theatre space, and jointly account for an estimated 80-90% of Australia’s entertainment ticketing market.

“The move to digital-only ticketing is the greatest current opportunity,” says Ticketmaster’s O’Connor. The company’s tap-and-go SafeTix feature will roll out in Australia in 2020.

Geoff Jones, CEO of TEG, has the final word: “The live experience, as part of the culture, is on a massive tear,” he says. But there “needs to be a bit of caution. Three or four years ago there was a cyclic downturn in the number of tours. That’s looming in the next 12-18 months. It’s solid, but we need to have a diverse range of live content, not just concerts.”

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

AUSTRIA LANGUAGES GERMAN, HUNGARIAN, CROATIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 8.7 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 50,000 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 7.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 69 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.0 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42.4 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 267 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 283

Among Wien tickets’ clients is Vienna’s key venue Wiener Stadthalle, where Holiday on Ice is taking place again this winter.

Ticketmaster and DEAG’s Myticket.at control significant parts of the market, however, none of the companies volunteered any market share figures.

Connecting the market-leading ticketing systems and platforms directly in real-time is a company called Ticket Gretchen. Sophie Garzon-Lapierre, responsible for marketing and co-operations at Ticket Gretchen, explains: “Via our APIs, all available tickets on the market can be exchanged between, and sold via various ticketing systems and platforms.”

Ticket Gretchen is reacting to a number of trends it observes in the market: multichannel ticketing solutions working with open APIs, event organisers wanting to have the lead on their sales channels and data, the growing importance of data-driven marketing, audience development, and more.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES

© HOLIDAY ON ICE / DEEN VAN MEER 2018

According to Oeticket CEO Christoph Klingler, the number one sales channel for the firm is online, followed by outlet sales and mobile app, adding that, “social media is more of a marketing tool than a sales channel at the moment.”

Print-at-home is still Austria’s favourite ticket format, so nothing new on that front. Paper tickets come in second, while mobile ticketing is gaining a lot of traction.

Ticketmaster GmbH CEO Klaus Zemke confirmed, “While we have seen continued growth in mobile marketing, search and awareness in previous years – mobile conversion has been growing exponentially in the last 12 months.

“There still remains a portion of ticket buyers who prefer to purchase their tickets at outlets, so we must work to educate fans towards the adoption of all things mobile.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES

W

ith an affluent, enthusiastic audience for international artists, as well as a healthy domestic scene, the live entertainment market in Austria is strong. Bordering Switzerland, Hungary, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Liechtenstein, it benefits from a wellconnected position. But the market is small – estimated to be around 60-80m tickets a year, around 70-80% of which are sold in Vienna. “In Austria, you can definitely play one big arena or one big stadium,” independent promoter Ewald Tatar of Barracuda told IQ Magazine last year. “For the second or third shows, you need to be really careful.”

PRIMARY TICKETING In Austria, where it operates as Oeticket, CTS Eventim is the clear market leader, whether one looks at sports, music or other forms of live entertainment.

City of Vienna-owned Wien Tickets is the strong local player in the market, with Culturall.at and NTRY also making their presence felt.

The ratio between tickets sold for international vs. domestic acts depends very much on the amount of big stadium shows that visit Austria, mainly Vienna, each year. The average ratio, according to Klingler, is more or less 50/50, with pop and rock remaining the most popular genres.

This may change if the ongoing popularity of Austrian music sung in the native language of German remains as en vogue as it currently is. It makes up “a visible and fast-increasing part of our sales,” says Klingler.

Ticketmaster observed an increase in sales for Austria’s many city festivals, which “continue to increase in popularity,” says Zemke.

SECONDARY TICKETING Given the size of the market, there’s not too much for-profit resale activity going on, although that changes when high-profile international artists visit the country. The main reseller in the country is Viagogo, which suffered a setback this year when it was sued by two comedians whose tickets had ended up on the website.

In June, a judge at the court of Linz sided with the plaintiffs and Viagogo has been ordered to stop misleading customers when it comes to pricing, to disclose the identity of its sellers, and to check whether they’re even eligible to sell tickets.

Professor Johannes Hintermayr, lawyer at Prof. Hintermayr & Partner, who handled both cases, tells ITY that the ruling represented a “milestone in the history against secondary sellers”.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 25

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

THE BALTICS LANGUAGES ESTONIAN, LATVIAN, LITHUANIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 1.25 (EE) 1.94 (LV) 2.82 (LT) CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 31,800 (EE) 27,700 (LV) 32,400 (LT) INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 1.1 (EE) 1.6 (LV) 2.1 (LT) SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 56.7 (EE) 49.1 (LV).56.8 (LT) POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.0 (EE) 9.4 (LV) 11.1 (LT) POPULATION % AGED 25-54 41.4 (EE) 41.8 (LV) 40.0 (LT)

Positivus is part of the country’s booming festival scene.

O

f the three Baltic States, Lithuania has the biggest population, with 2.85million, followed by Latvia (1.95m) and then Estonia (1.3m), though agents for larger international acts often treat the three as a 6m-strong single market, with one show to cover the region. The leading ticketer, Baltic Ticket Holdings (BTH) is Russian-owned, though in Lithuania and Latvia there is local competition.

PRIMARY TICKETING The overall dominance of Kassir.ru’s BTH in the Baltic states is fairly well enshrined, the firm having assembled a family that includes market leaders in all three countries – Estonia’s Piletilevi, Latvia’s Biļešu Serviss and Lithuania’s Bilietai.lt – as well as Kvitki in next-door Belarus.

According to its last public figures, the company sold 5.5m tickets a year across 25,000 events.

In June, Latvian media company AS Ekspress Grupp, which manages the news portal Delfi.lv, acquired Biļešu Paradīze, the direct rival to Biļešu Serviss, with founders Jānis Daube and Ēriks Naļivaiko remaining on board. In Lithuania, Tiketa is number two to Bilietai.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Online sales and print-at-home tickets remain the main ticketing methods across the Baltic states, though mobile is, of course, growing fast, and box offices remain. Estonia, with its population of 1.3m, has been called “the most advanced digital society in the world” with taxes and much of the country’s voting completed online. Piletilevi and certain Baltic festivals have introduced PocketZebra mobile tickets.

SECONDARY TICKETING As with many developing markets, secondary ticketing has not yet gained significant traction in the Baltics.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Estonia is the smallest Baltic state by population and size, but its proximity to Finland can on occasion make it the region’s default tour stop. For instance, Metallica stopped in Estonia this summer when the band took their WorldWired Tour to Tartu’s Raadi Airfield.

Others tour the Baltics in more depth. Rammstein have a show next summer at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds in the Estonian capital, and another at Lucavsala in the Latvian capital, Riga. Andrea Bocelli, who is scheduled to play in Tallinn in August this year, plays in Riga and the Lithuanian second city of Kaunas in January. But while Western artists are responsible for the biggest shows, the majority of live entertainment is local.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Festivals have become a big part of summer in the Baltics. One local favourite, Tallinn’s Õllesummer, shut its doors for good last year after celebrating its 25th anniversary. Founder Marje Hansar said she had no regrets, saying she’d had enough and citing a saturated market.

Plenty of others remain, including Into The Valley in Rummu, EDM festival Weekend in Pärnu, Hard Rock Laager in Vana-Vigala and Rock In Haapsalu. Latvia has Positivus in Salacgrīva and Summer Sound on the beach at Liepāja; while Lithuania offers three-day pop show Granatos Live in Rumšiškės, Karklė on the Baltic Sea and Galapagai, formerly on an island in Zarasai, now at Palūšė in the Aukštaitija National Park.

VALUE OF MARKET There are no official valuations of the live music market in the Baltic States, though the combined market was estimated at around €70m a year in 2016.

26 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

TAXES & CHARGES Lithuania and Latvia apply VAT of 21% to concert tickets, while Estonia charges 20%. Lithuania’s performing rights society LATGA and Latvian authors’ society AKKA/LAA levy a 6% tariff. Estonian authors’ society EAU charges 5%.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

BELGIUM LANGUAGES DUTCH, FRENCH, GERMAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 11.5 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 46,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 9.9 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 84 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.3 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 40.0 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 270 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 285

© BEN HOUDIJK FOR ROCK WERCHTER

Award-winning Rock Werchter is one of Belgium’s largest festivals.

A

lthough Belgium has a population of just 11 million people, the country is home to some of Europe’s most iconic music festivals and has a history of attracting more than its fair share of international touring productions.

Its importance in the European business is not to be underestimated and Live Nation’s recent moves to expand into the venues sector may well signal a new strategy for the company of securing arena contracts then leveraging Ticketmaster to bolster revenues.

PRIMARY TICKETING The influence of Tele Ticket Service (TTS), particularly in the northern region of Flanders, is set to change after Live Nation announced it had acquired the company’s parent company, Sportpaleis Group, in April 2019. Although that deal did not include TTS, nor the group’s ownership of Night of the Proms promoter PSE Belgium, it does include the company’s venue assets – Antwerp’s Lotto and Sportpaleis arenas, the Forest National arena near Brussels, the Ethias Arena in Hasselt, and the Capitole concert hall in Ghent.

In Belgium, venues choose their ticketing partner, meaning that Ticketmaster’s market share in the country is set for an imminent boost, and should, in time, propel it to the number-one position in the marketplace.

TTS should remain a major player, as it handles tickets for the Proximus Go For Music service of Belgian telecoms network Proximus. It also works with Belgian white-label service Oxynade on the self-service Tele Ticket Easy platform.

Vivendi also has a presence in Belgium, where its See Tickets division includes the local Paylogic business, following its acquisition of the Dutch group in April 2018. Paylogic built its business in the open-air dance industry, first under SFX, then as part of LiveStyle, from whom it was acquired by See Tickets. Its long-term Belgian clients include Dour Festival and the giant Tomorrowland event in Boom.

Live Nation’s investment in the country’s arenas sector massively strengthens the local Ticketmaster operations, which already hold the ticketing contracts for the Palais 12 arena in Brussels, the Kursaal in Ostend, as well as smaller venues such as the historic La Madeleine in Brussels. Ticketmaster Belgium managing director, Dieter Kraewinkels,

reveals there are other projects in the pipeline, too. “We have the brandnew De Nieuwe Koers Park opening, with the first show, Rammstein, taking place next year – a fantastic venue that will bring many great artists to Belgium,” he says.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Like most developed European ticketing markets, the most popular sales channel in Belgium is online, with phone, and bricks-andmortar outlet sales on the decline. Print-at-home tickets are common, while the popularity of mobile tickets is increasing.

SECONDARY TICKETING The resale of tickets has been forbidden under Belgian law since 2009.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Belgium is a nation split by two languages – Flemish in the north and French in the south, meaning that its home-grown stars can have varied success depending where in the country they perform.

Kraewinkels notes, “Brussels-based hip-hop is booming within the already strong urban music genre.”

Belgium is also home to large pockets of Italian immigrants meaning that Italian acts prove popular, while other international acts make up the majority of venue dates around the country.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The live entertainment sector has largely recovered over the past couple of years, following terrorist bombings in March 2016 that impacted confidence in the market.

The nation’s festival business is incredibly strong, despite the disastrous, high-profile failure of Vestiville in June 2019, with fans from around the world flocking to annual stalwarts such as Rock Werchter, Tomorrowland, Pukkelpop and Graspop Metal Meeting.

TAXES & CHARGES There’s a 6% VAT charge on ticket sales in Belgium, while service fees are typically about 5 to 20% of face value.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 27

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

BRAZIL LANGUAGE PORTUGUESE POPULATION (MILLIONS) 207.4 CURRENCY REAL GDP/CAPITA (US$) 15,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 122.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 54 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 16.4 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.9 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 112 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 139

PRIMARY TICKETING Brazil is a massive, decentralised place and every one of its many large cities has its own ecosystem of local ticketing companies.

Collectively, these number in the many hundreds, and most still sell their tickets chiefly through physical outlets and over the phone.

But there is also a busy modernising force made up of Internetdriven Brazilian players such as Ingresso Rápido, mobile giant Movile’s broad-based event platform Sympla, data-driven party-discovery operator Ingresse and cinema-ticketing giant Ingresso.com (bought by US firm Fandango in 2015), as well as international outfits such as Eventim and Eventbrite, and local promoter-owned sites including T4F’s Tickets For Fun and Move Concerts’ Livepass.

Ingresso Rápido considers itself the market leader, having expanded into Brazil’s key metropolitan markets, from the cultural capital of São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Campinas, Florianópolis, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza and Salvador, with others on the agenda.

But the company – and the market – were dealt a blow in March by a ruling from Brazil’s high court, the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ), which judged that the convenience fee charged by companies that sell tickets online is unlawful.

Ingresso Rápido, the focus of the action brought by the Consumer Protection Association of Rio Grande do Sul, was ordered to return five years of fees to consumers, prompting a wave of support from commentators and rivals.

If the ruling is allowed to stand, suggested Gabriel Benarrós, founder of Ingresse, “the companies that created the convenience of buying online cease to exist. It’s simple, no one works for free,” he wrote on Medium.com. “The possibility of buying tickets on the cell phone disappears and we return to the physical stores, the opticians, and the kiosks in shopping centres.”

Ingresso Rápido has appealed the ruling, which remained under discussion in the STJ at the time of writing.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES A recent article on marketing and technology site Brazil Journal estimated that only 10% of all ticket sales in Brazil are via the Internet, with the rest going through call centres and numerous and diverse retail networks. But companies such as Ingresso Rápido and Ingresse have made the web their home, and their proportions are far higher, particularly via mobile.

And ticketing providers are also finding further advantages in technology. “Our biggest development has been using chat and WhatsApp bots to support customer care and marketing, and also to

28 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Ed Sheeran played at Allianz Parque on his recent tour.

sell tickets,” says Eventim Brazil CEO Donovan Ferreti. “Customer care automation via bots brings us a real advantage compared to our competitors. They have helped us reduce costs and react faster to customer inquiries.”

VALUE OF MARKET Estimates of the size of the Brazilian market have an apples-andoranges quality, and the geographical fragmentation of the country’s live entertainment business makes complete data hard to find. The total market for online and offline tickets of all types is estimated by Brazil Journal at R$55billion (€13bn) a year. Last year, Ingresso Rápido put the value of the ticketing market in major urban centres at R$15bn (€3.6bn).

Ebit Webshoppers values the Brazilian online ticketing segment (cinema, sport and entertainment) at R$3.7bn (€880m). In 2018, 46m tickets were sold online in Brazil, according to Benarrós.

SECONDARY TICKETING Selling above face value is illegal in Brazil, but it still goes on aplenty wherever demand for tickets is high.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Around 5-10% of shows are by international acts, with the remainder going to Brazil’s fertile homegrown talent. Tastes are heavily regional in Brazil, and styles include funk, samba, sertanejo, MPB, forró and pagode.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS CRM systems have become more common in Brazil, and promoters are beginning to take such services into account when they choose the companies that ticket their events, according to Ferreti.

“Also, facial recognition is increasingly being used by ticketing companies in Brazil to prevent fraud,” he says.

TAXES & CHARGES The case against online fees is ongoing and potentially changes everything. The online convenience fees charged by ticketing companies have gradually fallen to 5% or 10% in many cases, though, in general, they have traditionally been higher and, in some cases, remain so.

© GOVERNO DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

N

ot for the first time in recent memory, Brazil was in full-on crisis mode in summer 2019, as new right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro unleashed a torrent of colourful scandals. Meanwhile, the economy has been a stuck record since a crippling recession in 2015/16, unemployment is rocketing and analysts don’t expect growth until 2020 at the earliest.

But the teeming ticketing market, at least, has begun to achieve a degree of clarity in recent years, with tech-savvy, nationally focused operators challenging an old-fashioned, regionalised status quo. Bizarre new legislation against online convenience fees, however, threatens to do grave damage.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

BULGARIA LANGUAGE BULGARIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 7.1 CURRENCY LEV GDP/CAPITA (US$) 21,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 4.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 47.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.2

E

astern Europe is still a mixed bag when it comes to touring. It makes little sense to compare, say, Poland, Slovakia or Hungary to Lithuania, Romania or Bulgaria. In the case of the latter, promoters are still hesitant to invite new contemporary artists to their venues, tending to bet on safer heritage bands.

Political stability, GDP growth, and monetary fund stability, since 1997, (which provides a fixed exchange rate between the Bulgarian Lew and the Euro), have stabilised the country’s economy. And while increased salaries have had a positive effect on buying power in the bigger cities, the huge migration wave from Bulgaria’s rural areas to Western Europe is creating a vacuum. “People that leave the country are potential customers that we have lost,” says Miroslav Emanoilov, CEO of Eventim Bulgaria.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketing sales mainly focus on the capital of Sofia, although in 2019 Plovdiv was named a cultural capital of Europe, which has boosted the live entertainment offerings in the city.

Eventim Bulgaria continues to be the country’s market leader, and,

according to Emanoilov, its market share has increased even since last year, although concrete figures weren’t available. “We’ve doubled the number of events over the past four years,” he says.

Ticketportal.bg and Best Tickets (formerly TicketPro), come in second and third after Eventim, followed by local players Bilet.bg and Bgbileti.com.

SECONDARY TICKETING Given the size of Bulgaria, it comes as no surprise that there is absolutely no market for secondary ticketing.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Most Bulgarians still buy their tickets at the box office, but, according to Emanoilov, “We see a steady increase in online sales up to approximately 40% for events with expensive tickets.” Social media still makes limited contributions to the overall ticket count.

Paper tickets are the most popular, followed by print-at-home. The ratio between international and domestic ticket sales levels off at approximately 45/55. The most popular genre, in terms of ticket sales, is rock.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

CANADA LANGUAGES ENGLISH, FRENCH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 37.65 CURRENCY CANADIAN DOLLAR

GDP/CAPITA (US$) 48,300

INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 35 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 30.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.8 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 40 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 610 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 701

© TIM SNOW / EVENKO

Multi-day Osheaga in Montreal is one of the country’s largest music festivals.

T

he live music market in Canada continues to grow in 2019, with over half of Canadians (59%) attending live events, as well as attending the country’s many music festivals staged coast to coast. When it comes to the millennial age group, the percentage of those attending live music events has jumped to 70%.

July is the busiest month of the summer live music season in Canada, according to information provided by Ticketmaster, as 37% of all summer concert-goers will have attended a live music event.

PRIMARY TICKETING Canada comprises a very large geographical area, the second largest in the world in terms of square kilometres (trailing only Russia), and yet ranks 222nd in the world in terms of population density, meaning that the Canadian population is very spread out, with only six cities breaking the one million mark nationwide.

Ticketmaster is the dominant force in the Canadian market. In June 2019, it settled a “deceptive pricing” lawsuit for CAN$4.5million (€3m).

Other major primary ticketing sources include regional ticketing services like Ticket Window, which services events in the province of Ontario.

Toronto, the largest city in Canada by population, routinely tops live concert ticket sales in the nation. Stats available from the summer of 2019 only reinforce this point, as Toronto alone accounted for 31% of total summer ticket sales across the country.

SECONDARY TICKETING Ticketing in Canada has become an “arms race” against bots, according to Kelly Meehan of Ticketmaster. “In 2018, Ticketmaster globally blocked over 10 billion bot purchase attempts and that number is on track to grow in 2019,” she tells ITY. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have all banned the use of bots.

30 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Canada enjoys a diverse array of musical genres, from rock to punk, to metal, to hip-hop, the traditional music of the country’s varied First Nations peoples, and a continued tradition of classic Canadian folk in the vein of acts such as Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy St. Marie, and Joni Mitchell. However, in recent years, it is contemporary sounds that have topped live event attendance in the country.

Mike Evenson works at AudienceView, a white-label ticketing B2B solution that serves all forms of live entertainment (comprising over 8,000 venues, and which recently acquired Vendini, CrowdTorch and associated consumer-facing brands that include TuneStub and ElectroStub). According to Evenson, “Urban music has seen the most growth in the last year, while EDM has begun to stabilise.”

The summer months are perennially the busiest and most profitable for the live music market in Canada, and branding and sponsorship are taking on ever more important roles. Anthony Palermo of Connect &Go, an RFID company that works with the live music industry to provide integrated solutions for music festivals and their attendees, backs up this point: “Festivals are securing more revenue from sponsors than before,” he says, “and by consequence, allowing them to activate onsite, creates bigger brand engagement experiences.”

TAXES & CHARGES There is a 15% withholding rate for visiting artists on services provided. Commissions charged by primary ticketing agents vary, but for large national vendors, they are on average, in the 20-25% range, although can be as high as 37% in some cases. Smaller local or regional vendors’ fees are generally lower.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

CHILE LANGUAGE SPANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 17.8 CURRENCY PESO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 24,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 11.6 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 56.0 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 15.0 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.1 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 27 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 33

C

hile has thrived in recent years, where Brazil and Argentina, the other two points in the South American touring triangle, have faltered. A one-centre market – the wider Santiago area is home to 90% of the country’s entire population and, needless to say, pretty much all of its international shows – Chile is a must-play for anyone passing. Paul McCartney, Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna, Luis Miguel, Iron Maiden, J Balvin, André Rieu and Marc Anthony will all have passed through by the year’s end.

Punto Ticket handled passes for the Lollapalooza festival in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

PRIMARY TICKETING By its own estimate, PuntoTicket takes about 80% of the market for shows over 3,000-capacity, and deals in concerts, sporting events, festivals and theatre. As part of Egroup, the entertainment division of the regionally powerful HLR Group, Punto is a sister company to promoter Bizarro, and Santiago’s 14,000-cap Movistar Arena is also operated from within the family.

Punto handles the all-important ticketing for the Movistar Arena, and other venues. It will add three new theatres in Santiago from September, in the 4,500-capacity Teatro Caupolicán, Teatro Teletón and Espacio Broadway. Punto also leads the market in Peru via Teleticket, which it acquired in 2016.

Also operating in Chile are Ticketek and Ticketpro.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Most tickets are sold online in Chile, and have been for several years. Print-at-home has never appealed to Chileans, so paper tickets are usually delivered. “Currently, over 80% of our sales take place on our website and half through mobile devices,” says PuntoTicket CEO Paulo Atienza. “We started to push e-ticket sales at the beginning of this year and currently over 50% of the purchases are e-ticket.”

PuntoTicket is working on m-ticket functionality with a view to a launch soon. “In the meantime, we can scan QR codes straight from mobile devices during validation and access control at most of the shows,” says Atienza.

PuntoTicket also sells through the Hites chain of department stores and Cinemark movie theatres.

Likewise, at the Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, the country’s key stadium venue, the recent stars have been McCartney, Shakira, Phil Collins, and Roger Waters, with Muse and Iron Maiden (playing the larger of a pair of shows) to come this year. Lotus Producciones’ Lollapalooza and Santiago Gets Louder are among the best-performing festivals.

VALUE OF MARKET There are no published estimates of the value of the Chilean live business.

SECONDARY TICKETING Viagogo is Chile’s most visible secondary channel, although it does not have a local base.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES In terms of the bigger shows, Chile loves both Latin American and Anglophone talent. The schedule of the Movistar Arena boasts Argentinians (Charly García, Andrés Calamaro, Tini), Americans (Weezer, Hall & Oates), Colombians (J Balvin, Sebastián Yatra), Mexicans (Marc Antonio Solís, Pepe Aguilar), Italians (Eros Ramazzotti), Canadians (Shawn Mendes), Swedes (Europe) and Britons (Iron Maiden, Morrissey, King Crimson), but only a relative handful of Chileans, including international breakout Mon Laferte, pop-rock duo Los Vásquez and The Voice Chile 2015 runner-up Cami.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The health of Chile’s live music market owes much to careful promoting by local players such as DG Medios, Bizarro and Lotus. While Chile has substantial pockets of prosperity and a regionally very respectable GDP per capita it also has a broad gulf between rich and poor, and promoters must be careful neither to overload the market nor let ticket prices rise out of reach.

“Macroeconomic projections for Chile show that our GDP will continue to grow in the 2.5% to 3% range, with low inflation of below 3%,” says Atienza. “We have our own challenges, but we see the Chilean market as much more stable than the other markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the customers are spending more on sparetime activities.”

TAXES & CHARGES VAT in Chile is 19%. Service charges on tickets tend to stand at around 15% of face value.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 31

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

CHINA LANGUAGES MANDARIN, CANTONESE POPULATION (MILLIONS) 1,420 CURRENCY YUAN RENMINBI GDP/CAPITA (US$) 16,800

INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 829 ACTIVE MOBILE USERS (MILLIONS) 788

PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 188 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 226

T

he total number of Chinese who listen to music on at least a weekly basis is closing in on the one billion mark in 2019, according to statistics compiled by the Nielsen Company. As far as digital and physical revenue, the Chinese market has entered the Top 10 globally for the first time, appearing in seventh position in 2018.

According to Frances Moore, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, China has become one of the leading markets worldwide when it comes to spurring the growth of the global music industry.

Per capita recorded music revenue in China currently stands at just $0.21, about one hundred times lower than the UK or US. However, given the massive population, coupled with an ever-growing number of middle-class citizens, the Chinese music market is set to catch up to the US overall digital and physical revenue figure of $8.7billion (€7.8bn) by the year 2027, according to figures from the IFPI, CAVCA, MCSC, and The

The AEG-operated Mercedes Benz Arena in Shanghai is a mainstay of music and other events.

32 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Daolue Cultural Industry Research Center.

When it comes to live music, the Chinese market in 2019 is valued at $285million (€256m), up from last year’s figure of $266m (€239m).

Projections for 2020 have this figure pegged at $304m (€273m).

PRIMARY TICKETING China in 2019 is a country with hundreds of ticketing options, with local concert venues, arenas and stadiums all providing their own box offices, and multiple major players in online ticketing, such as Damai.cn, offering consumers the chance to buy tickets for events anywhere in the country. Regional services such as Smartticket.cn, a ticketing service for concerts in the Shanghai area run by SmartShanghai, do the same for the country’s major urban centres.

A major addition to the ticketing landscape appeared in July, when it emerged that Maoyan, a leading Chinese ticketing platform available in

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES CHINA

42 cities, would be expanding into a full entertainment and culture service, partnering with the likes of online retail giant Tencent on musicrelated projects. This brings Maoyan’s considerable movie ticketing clout (market share 60%) to the realm of music.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES China boasts 15 metro areas with populations of ten million or more, including the metropolises of Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, and the capital Beijing. Though these areas have enjoyed robust growth as the Chinese population increasingly urbanises, a report issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has projected that the overall population of China will begin to contract by the year 2027, if it has not begun to do so already. This is a by-product of the country’s former one-child policy. Still, this has not put a damper on the live music market, according to Robb Spitzer at AEG, thanks to new arenas being built in cities across the country, and an upsurge in the success of events at smaller clubs.

“The volume and variety of Asian and international content continues to grow. Newer venues like the Dream Cube in Chengdu have become quite busy, the new arena in Chongqing is on its way,” Spitzer says. “In years past, smaller live houses floundered a bit but now they are regularly presenting successful events around the 1,000-cap level.”

ISY Music Festival in Hainan features a mix of Western and local artists.

SECONDARY TICKETING VALUE OF MARKET There exists no official body for ticketing in China. However, according to available statistics compiled by PwC, live music revenue is projected to reach $304m (€274m) by 2020, rising at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.1%.

Ticket scalping is a widespread practice in China across many different industries, and concerts are no exception. Scalpers operate online and will also stand outside venues on show days, selling tickets for mark-ups that can reach up to 300% for the most popular artists.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES China has become a true part of the global music market in recent years, coming a long way since the first Western acts arrived over 30 years ago, and has thus transformed into a country that is more open to styles of music that are not inherently Chinese, such as hip-hop.

However, the government keeps a draconian eye on outside influences, even forcing both local and foreign artists to keep any tattoos covered when in the public eye.

It is also common practice for artists applying to play in China to have to submit all of their lyrics, artwork, and merchandise designs for approval by the Chinese government, as PRC officials seek to keep a tight hold on what sort of art Chinese citizens are exposed to, and are particularly wary of those that may foment any form of dissent or socalled “impure” thought. Whilst China is an increasingly open market, it is very much one that is firmly bound by the reins of an ultra conservative government that wishes to preserve what it views as the purity of Chinese culture, safeguarding it from the perceived dangers and perils of Western decadence.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Though YouTube, the most popular video-streaming service globally, is officially banned in China, live-streaming of concerts is becoming more widespread among young Chinese music lovers, with many sharing concert videos via WeChat (daily active users > one billion), the most widely used social media platform in the country. What’s more, the places in which concerts are staged are changing, according to Gloria Fong of Hong Kong Ticketing, with artists and promoters seeking alternative venues that, while common in Western markets, are a relatively new thing in China.

“Artists are looking for alternative venues, such as outdoor or open spaces in Hong Kong,” Fong says. “Ed Sheeran’s ÷ Tour concert was held in the outdoor venue at Hong Kong Disneyland in April 2019, and another concert at the same outdoor venue in May 2019 was held by popular Taiwanese band MayDay. That’s relatively new in Hong Kong.”

TAXES & CHARGES Withholding tax for visiting artists is 20%. VAT is 17% and an additional entertainment tax of 5-20% is also applied, depending on the type of event and price of tickets. Large ticketing companies charge 2030% as commission for ticket sales, while smaller ones charge 5-20%.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 33

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

CZECH REPUBLIC LANGUAGE CZECH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 10.7 CURRENCY KORUNA GDP/CAPITA (US$) 35,500 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 8.1 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 63.9 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.8 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 35 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 36

concerts and sport events to locals. We have been selling tickets for the venue for the last year, and it’s been fantastic to see Czech fans already so excited about this new venue opening.”

Other operators include TicketStream, which is part of the Six Dots group that also owns small-show specialist Ticketon and classical and theatre platform Bohemia Ticket. TicketStream’s traditional specialism has been music festivals and sporting events, though it is strong in small- and medium-sized shows.

Independent promoter David Urban, of D Smack U Promotion, tells ITY he uses Go Out for his ticketing services, which can use its app to turn smartphones and tablets into instant scanning devices.

SECONDARY TICKETING The Czech Republic’s ability to attract significant touring artists and productions has inevitably made it a target for secondary ticketing market operators, such as Viagogo, in recent years. Indeed, the availability of cheap flights into Prague means that there is a tourism element to the resale business, with visitors keen to get their hands on tickets to the shows that grace the O2 Arena in particular.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Metallica played at the O2 Arena in Prague, where Ticketmaster has recently won the contract.

W

ith the local population counting down to the 30th anniversary celebrations of the Velvet Revolution this autumn, the country’s live entertainment sector has the opportunity to showcase its skills, both for Czech citizens and the many millions of international visitors who head to capital city, Prague, on an annual basis.

PRIMARY TICKETING Historically, regional operator Ticketportal has claimed the lion’s share of the Czech ticketing market, but that could be set to change in the not-too-distant future, as Ticketmaster in July 2019 revealed it had won the contract for the nation’s flagship venue, the O2 Arena in Prague.

The lucrative contract had been the jewel in Ticketportal’s crown, but sources in the Czech Republic state that Ticketmaster’s ambitious plans in the region, which saw it acquire Ticketpro in 2016, meant it was only a matter of time before it secured the deal for the 18,000-capacity arena. Ticketportal will still receive allocations for shows at the venue, but Ticketmaster’s preferred partner status will likely elevate it to number one in terms of market share.

Noting the huge opportunities that the deal hands to Ticketmaster, the company’s local managing director, Simona Matějková, says, “[The] O2 Arena Prague [is] one of the most modern multipurpose venues in Europe. Celebrating 15 years in operation and welcoming 10 million visitors since it opened in 2004, this venue is at the heart of the Czech Republic’s live entertainment scene.”

She adds, “This September we will see the O2 Universum open, located right next door to the O2 Arena Prague. The brand-new multifunctional congress and cultural centre will hold a total capacity of 10,000, bringing a host of international congresses, corporate events,

34 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Physical distribution remains strong in the Czech Republic, but online sales account for the majority of tickets, with print-at-home common practice and mobile and e-tickets growing in popularity.

“We continue our move towards online ticket sales, however, we have to remember there is a significant portion of Czech fans who still prefer to purchase their tickets offline,” comments Matějková. “There is a fine balance to tread as we work to educate our fans on the new world of mobile ticketing and the positives it brings.”

On the physical front, Ticketportal can flex its muscles with more than 800 outlets, while TicketStream’s 500-strong network includes tourism offices and travel agencies. TicketStream also has its Ticketcard loyalty scheme card, which holders can use to upload tickets and swipe in for access.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Unlike many of its former Soviet Bloc neighbours, the Czech Republic does remarkably well in terms of the number of international artists who visit. Tourists make up a small percentage of audiences, but fans from the likes of Germany, Slovakia, Austria and even Hungary are known to drive across the border to see their favourite acts.

“We expect to see festival attendance rise in the next few years, as they become increasingly popular every year with Czech fans, especially the rock and pop ones,” says Ticketmaster’s Matějková.

The Czech population also has a healthy appetite for local repertoire, with the likes of Miro Žbirka, Lucie Bílá and Marek Ztracený, to name but three on the calendar at the O2 Arena in coming months.

TAXES & CHARGES VAT on ticket sales is 15%, paid by promoters, and commission is typically around 10-20%. In certain parts of Prague, ticketed events of 1,000-capacity and above, incur a cultural tax: for the likes of the Velka, Lucerna and Roxy venues in Prague 1, there is no charge; Tipsport Arena, Forum Karlín and the O2 Arena in Prague 7, 8 and 9 face a 2.5% charge; and for venues in Prague 4, it rises to 5%.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

DENMARK LANGUAGE DANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 5.8 CURRENCY KRONE GDP/CAPITA (US$) 50,100 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 5.4 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 77 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 13.1 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 38.8 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 312 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 349

Opened in 2017, the Live Nation-operated Royal Arena in Copenhagen saw over a million visitors in under two years.

D

enmark doesn’t quite have the talent portfolio of neighbouring Sweden, or the oil wealth of Norway, but it’s got MØ, Lukas Graham and Iceage, a rash of major festivals, a famously high happiness index, and a very solid market.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster Denmark and the Eventim-owned Billetlugen – which retains its original name, unlike Norway’s Eventim.no and Sweden’s Eventim.se – are the key players in Denmark, with something in the region of a third of the market apiece. Billet.dk (which also offers a self-service platform called Billetshop), Billetten, and other smaller players make up the rest of the market. “The live entertainment business is, in general, still doing very well here,” says Ticketmaster Denmark and Finland managing director Jakob Lund. “Hand in hand with this, the ticketing business is strong and stable.” Billet.dk spokesman James Lee points to the rapid turnaround of fortune of one of its festival clients, Rock Under Broen, as an example of a recent success story. “It was close to collapse, but five years ago it partnered with Billet.dk and completely reorganised. It is now the biggest one-day festival in Denmark.”

SECONDARY TICKETING “Secondary ticketing remains illegal in Denmark and is still a hot topic, drawing lot of attention from fans, clients and the public in general,” says Lund.

This year, the Danish Ministry of Culture initiated an anti-secondary ticketing campaign, together with a number of leading festivals, clubs, promoters and ticketing providers, focusing on consumer safety and information. Ticketmaster Denmark and Eventim have both been active in their support.

“In co-operation with our owner, CTS Eventim, we plan to launch our fan-friendly Fansale resale platform soon,” says Arnesen.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Neither musically nationalistic nor wholly dependent on Anglophone pop music, Denmark has the best of all worlds, and its own talent has even gradually started to infiltrate hard-to-impress Sweden.

“All genres of music are prevalent in the Scandinavian market, from rap to opera, and all sell well to their particular fan base,” says Arnesen.

“For huge festivals and stadium shows, it is still the international artists in the rock and pop genres that draw the biggest crowds.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Print-at-home is the favoured physical method, while mobile is growing fast. “Due to the high usage of digital media, online sales via digital devices are above 90% in all markets in Scandinavia,” says Eventim Scandinavia CEO Jens B. Arnesen. “Mobile usage, especially, is increasing and expected to grow further.” Paper tickets remain fairly popular, he adds, especially when combined with special fan ticket layouts, which people collect as memorabilia.

VALUE OF MARKET According to the most recent figures, the Danish live music business was worth DKK4.5billion (€600million) in 2016 (source: Dansk Musikomsætning 2017). That accounts for 60.5% of the Danish music industry overall, and rising.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The Scandinavian markets tend to be relatively socially enlightened, and promoters are increasingly adopting environmentally aware policies.

“Many are attempting to compensate for the carbon footprint of their events and give back through sustainability campaigns,” says Arnesen. “As more consumers try to do what they can to help the environment, it becomes an important factor in decision-making and consumer behaviour.”

TAXES & CHARGES The Danish taxman hits promoters hard – a 25% VAT and 5.5% PRS charge take more than 30% off every krone of revenue, hiking up ticket prices in a country where everything is already fairly expensive. However, many venues and events in Denmark are non-profit and therefore exempt from VAT. Usually, ticketing companies charge a ticket fee somewhere between €3 and €5, with an additional fee on credit-card transactions.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

FINLAND LANGUAGE FINNISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 5.5 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 44,500 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 4.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 86.0 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.4 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 37.8 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 82 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 86

Lippupiste signed a ten-year ticketing rights deal for the Tampere Deck Arena, which is due to open in the second half of 2021.

of players, although some split three ways and some Live Nation events are exclusively with Ticketmaster.

Lippupiste is consciously positioning itself as a full-service partner in Finland, offering the example of its total outsourcing service partnership with the city of Lahti. “We will be taking care of all their ticketing, from setting up the events to selling them online and even in box offices,” says Mari Hatakka, Lippupiste sales director, culture and live entertainment.

“We strongly believe this is the way of the future. The diminishing funds in the public cultural sector will enhance the possibility [of this type of relationship] – we can produce services cost-effectively and with great expertise.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES

© TOMORROW AB

Three-quarters of all tickets are sold online, and the remainder through point-of-sale outlets. Print-at-home is the most popular method of delivery, accounting for 80% of all tickets at Lippupiste. Mobile delivery is also growing and now accounts for upwards of 10% of tickets Lippupiste sells.

“Finland is a high-tech country and probably ahead of many in digitalisation,” says Hatakka. “This presents itself in consumers’ continuous demand for better digital-user experience and high expectations for apps, online purchasing and so on.”

Ticketmaster has a similar experience. “We have very demanding, knowledgeable and committed fans who are going mobile in everything they do,” says Lund. “They want the best and most secure solution when it comes to ticketing, whether they are buying their favourite hockey season card or a high-demand ticket to an international artist.”

VALUE OF MARKET

T

he Finnish live event market is in a very positive and interesting growth phase,” says Ticketmaster Denmark and Finland managing director Jakob Lund. New venues, a healthy domestic scene, and a large number of small- and medium-sized event organisers contribute to a vibrant and demanding market for ticketing.

PRIMARY TICKETING In descending order of size, Finland’s prominent ticketers are CTS Eventim’s Lippupiste, Ticketmaster Finland and local brand Tiketti.

The key venues in Finland usually have exclusive relationships, the biggest being Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena, which Ticketmaster now holds.

But there have been other prizes up for grabs. Last year, Lippupiste signed a ten-year ticketing rights deal for the Tampere Deck Arena, a 13,500-seat indoor venue due for completion in the second half of 2021, and recently confirmed as the hub of the 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

Meanwhile, in the capital, Garden Helsinki, a 16,000-seat arena for elite sport, music and cultural events, will open in stages from 2020 to 2023, with Ticketmaster picking up the contract.

“There are several new venues planned for Finland,” notes Lund.

“The realisation of these ambitious projects will, without a doubt, positively impact the Finnish live entertainment and ticketing market significantly, adding new capacity, new locations, arenas and venues for a wide range of genres and events.”

Most of Finland’s biggest festivals, of which the biggest include Ruisrock, Provinssi and Ilosaarirock, give ticketing allocations to a couple

36 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

The Finnish music business turned over €930.2million in 2017, of which live music accounted for €475.5m [source: Music Finland].

SECONDARY TICKETING Secondary sales are growing in Finland, “mainly because Viagogo has activated here, causing similar sorrow as everywhere else,” according to Hatakka.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES “A rough estimate would be 20% international and 80% national in the live entertainment genre,” says Hatakka. “The big international acts like Ed Sheeran and Rammstein are obviously of great interest, but overall, too few of them come to Finland.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Finland has a population of 5.5m and it’s reckoned there is a heavy metal band for every 2,000 citizens. This summer, the city of Joensuu hosted the first Heavy Metal Knitting World Championships, where participants knit to the rhythm of heavy metal music “in a fashion somewhat similar to the air guitar.” Twelve groups took part in the competition, which was won by the Japanese band Giga Body Metal.

TAXES & CHARGES 10% VAT applies on ticket sales, and service fees vary between €1.50 and €4.50, plus delivery fees where applicable, and a 1% charge for paying by credit card.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

FRANCE LANGUAGE FRENCH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 62.8 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 44,100 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 57.2 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 69.1 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.8 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 37.8 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 924 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 948

M

emories of the Bataclan atrocity in 2015 might not exactly be fading, but there is a sense that the French live music business has moved out of its shadow, amid a restoration of gig-going confidence and an influx of investment in the sector.

In May, President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a €225million investment fund to aid the development of French cultural and audiovisual companies. Meanwhile, French infrastructure remains dynamic, from AEG Presents’ acquisition of Rock en Seine and CTS Eventim’s move for France Billet, to a clutch of new venues.

“Paris La Défense Arena and Arkea Arena in Bordeaux have recently opened and there are other new venues and arenas opening their doors from 2022 in Paris and Lyon,” says Ticketmaster France president François Thominet. “That means more events – which is great for fans and great for us.”

PRIMARY TICKETING Retail giant Groupe Fnac Darty’s France Billet is the éminence grise of French ticketing, providing the backend for market-leader Fnac Spectacles, as well as for hypermarket Carrefour and Veepee (formerly Vente-Privée) and its discount ticket service, Panda Ticket.

Under new president Arnaud Averseng, France Billet recently finalised its acquisition of last-minute ticketing company Billetreduc. com, which brings 2m customers and nearly €8m in revenues into the group. The France Billet family further includes ticketing software company Tick & Live, with its dedicated divisions for sporting events (Datasport) and live entertainment (Aparté).

It is fairly clear, then, why CTS Eventim moved for 48% of France Billet in July, with an option to acquire a majority stake in four years. The deal will initially be a ‘hands-off’ one from Eventim’s side, though France Billet will have access to Eventim technology and expertise. Into the bargain, France Billet will acquire 100% of Eventim France.

Ticketmaster operates both under its own name in France and as the power behind E. Leclerc, Auchan, Cultura and, as of this year, Casino’s discount online retailer Cdiscount. Ticketmaster France recently added self-service ticketing platform Universe to its offerings, and stands at number two.

Vivendi’s Digitick is the smallest of the main players, though its parent company is investing heavily in the French market through live event producers Vivendi Talents & Live and promoter Olympia Production, leading to fresh inventory for its ticketing wing. Olympia acquired the 50,000-cap festival Garorock last year and took on coproduction and ticketing duties for the ODP Talence Festival in February.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Online, already strong in France, is rapidly becoming a metonym for mobile. “We’ve seen an acceleration of mobile-ticket purchasing by fans, which is not surprising given the current technological climate,” says Thominet. “Everything is mobile, and ticketing is no different. There is, however, a portion of French fans who still prefer to purchase their tickets at outlets, so we need to keep that in mind.”

Given the strong links between French ticketing and French physical retail, and the fact that even online buyers often collect their tickets in

© THEOKINE_T.SHOOT

Garorock Festival was bought

by Vivendi-owned Olympia Production, adding inventory to the conglomerate’s ticketing arm, Digitick.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 37

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES FRANCE

Paris La Défense Arena opened in 2017 and is one of a number of new venues coming on stream.

person at an outlet, physical tickets still feel like a good bet for some time to come. Prodiss reports that 31% of people are most likely to buy their live entertainment tickets from a point of sale – compared to 51% online and 17% who can go either way – while 30% rarely or never buy online.

VALUE OF MARKET Prodiss/EY put the overall economic impact of live music at €4.9billion, with 39% of that concentrated on Île-de-France, the region that includes Paris. The live industry itself is worth €1.5bn, says Prodiss, of which around half is ticket sales.

As in other markets, various primary ticketers have smoothly moved into fan-to-fan resale though France Billet has so far resisted the temptation.

Dice has launched in France, with the stated ambition of bringing its Parisian operation to the level of its London one by the end of the year by driving habitual gig-going through its app. In a similar vein, ticket resale platform Shotgun extended its service this year to “remove the border between primary and secondary ticketing” in the modern style, allowing friends to resell to each other and put tickets back on-sale through the Shotgun app.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES SECONDARY TICKETING Viagogo has been wrangling with the French authorities for some time, taking heavy flak for its drip pricing, misrepresentation of ticket quantities and other crimes against the French Consumer Code.

Historically, it has dodged the French law against reselling without event organiser’s permission simply by operating from Switzerland.

In December 2018, France’s constitutional court ruled that those anti-ticket touting laws are compliant with the French constitution, after Viagogo and Ticketbis had challenged them before the French Constitutional Council. Viagogo, it was revealed at the time, is also the subject of a criminal action filed by Prodiss and several promoters.

But it is not the only one that has raised the ire of legislators. In July, a communiqué from France’s consumer protection authority, the DGCCRF (the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control) revealed that ten out of 12 ticketing platforms audited in a recent survey demonstrated “anomalies.”

Without naming names – except to say that those audit included “a resale site, a mixed sales and resale site, and seven online distributors of tickets” – the DGCCRF said it had found unfair practices including tickets with hidden service fees and a failure to communicate mandatory information in an obvious way. It also objected to the use of purchase countdowns – known as ‘stress marketing’ – to nudge consumers into making up their minds, and unfair terms such as a refusal to reimburse service fees in the event of a cancellation.

The DGCCRF has issued a series of injunctions to ticketers in the wake of the report, while advising consumers to be careful when buying theatre, concert and festival tickets online.

38 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Domestic music has never looked back from the arrival in 1994 of a 40% radio quota of French-language songs – unless you count the decision to reduce the quota to 35% in 2016. French acts still hold the nation in their thrall, though that is no barrier to the success of foreign pop. Muse, Metallica, BTS and Ed Sheeran have all booked the Stade de France in the past year or so, as have Jean-Luc Lahaye and ex-Téléphone legends Les Insus.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Festival package platform Festicket reports that France is becoming an increasingly popular international live music destination, thanks to the quality of its festivals and the low cost of travel. “We are seeing a lot of British people travelling to France, and a lot from Spain,” says Festicket CCO Yonas Blay. “France has some wonderful music festivals but it has not traditionally been as popular [among music tourists] as other large European countries. Maybe that is because it has a very proud tradition of French-language artists, and that has made it a bit less attractive, but I think that is changing.”

TAXES & CHARGES For concerts, collection society SACEM levies a charge of 11% of the ticket’s face value. A reduced VAT rate of 5.5% is applied to concert, theatre and circus tickets. A bullfighting promoter in Nîmes recently lost an appeal to be included in one of those categories in order to avoid the full rate of 20%. Impresario Simon Casas was told that, “bullfighters are not considered to be artists, since their performances do not count as an intellectual work.”

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

GERMANY LANGUAGE GERMAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 80.6 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 50,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 72.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 67.1 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.1 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 40.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 1,873 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 2,116

© MARIUS KEMPF

CTS Eventim ticketed the twin Rock im Park and Rock am Ring festivals.

G

ermany is the headquarters of ticketing giant CTS Eventim, whose business is worth more than €4billion by market capitalisation, and turned over more than €1.2bn in 2018. To be fair, those numbers also include income from its promotions business, which has increased dramatically over the past few years following an acquisition spree across Europe.

At this year’s ILMC, CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg announced that he would join-up 26 of his company’s majority-owned promoters under a new London-based, pan-European live entertainment network – Eventim Live – to cater to the increasing number of artists that expect their live entertainment partners to offer cross-border touring opportunities with tailor-made solutions, from a single source.

PRIMARY TICKETING CTS Eventim dominates the German ticketing market in all domains, and is on track to further improve its yearly earnings. It celebrated a new company sales record after selling out 800,000 tickets for Rammstein’s upcoming stadium tour in November, within a few hours.

There are other companies operating alongside the market leader.

Ticketmaster has established itself, while Reservix (which also owns AdTicket), and DEAG’s MyTicket (powered by Swiss SaaS platform SecuTix) are also in operation. However, none of these companies volunteered market share figures.

There are also genre- or location-specific offers, including Bilettix, which may seem like a small player when looking at the entire ticketing

space, but ranks in the top three behind Eventim and Reservix when it comes to theatre and other cultural niche markets such as opera and musicals. The theatre industry requires special functionalities such as subscription tickets, which very few ticketing agencies offer.

In 2017, Bilettix started a co-operation with Ticketmaster with the aim of growing nationally and internationally. Ticketmaster uses Bilettix software for customers who need special functionalities, while Bilettix benefits from the ticketing giant’s sales and marketing expertise. Thanks to an API integration, Bilettix customers are able to use the Ticketmaster platform for marketing and sales activities.

Then there are the many white-label offerings, including from the world’s largest software company SAP, which provides an independent, 360-degree ticketing platform that allows clients to decide and control the sales channels and business models (pricing, fee structures, etc), that they want to use.

According to Carsten Wohlrath, SAP chief product owner, “A unique fan experience is key for success. This experience starts during the ticket-buying process. Customers expect the complete ticketing process to be digital and mobile, from buying, payment, access, to couponing and loyalty management. They want to receive offers that are tailored to their needs.”

Personalising content is the order of the day, particularly when it comes to VIP packages and other upselling items, which are becoming increasingly popular with fans worldwide. Moritz Bremer, head of marketing and ticketing at Neuland Concerts, says: “Germany is catching

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 39

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES GERMANY

up rapidly. Our experience shows that packages work best if they are designed to be as customer-oriented as possible.”

Bremer said the dominance of CTS Eventim and Live Nation/ Ticketmaster was “both useful and dangerous for us. As a fully independent company, it is important for us to find the perfect balance between using the potential these companies hold for us, and at the same time relying on alternative structures to secure our independence.”

He admitted that the self-marketing of tickets via Neuland’s own platforms and search engines was becoming increasingly difficult. “The prices can reach disproportionate heights to the point they exclude the promoter as an advertiser. We always have to go new ways, sometimes old ones, in order to advertise our tours in the best possible way.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Eventim’s head of corporate communications, Christian Steinhof, says online remains the most important sales channel. Compared to other European countries, however, the box office is still sought out by many Germans when they want to buy tickets. This is particularly true in the niche fields Bilettix deals in, where very few tickets are sold via mobile devices.

Within online sales, mobile is continuing to gain traction. Ticketmaster Germany managing director Klaus Zemke told ITY that, “mobile conversion has been growing exponentially over the past year”. He confirmed that “there still remains a portion of ticket buyers who prefer to purchase their tickets at outlets, so we must work to educate fans towards the adoption of all things mobile.”

The ratio of ticket sales for international vs. domestic acts is pretty balanced in Germany. While the likes of Helene Fischer, Herbert Grönemeyer and Rammstein are right up there with international stars, there’s a new generation of German-speaking artists, especially in the hip-hop genre, that sell a lot of tickets. Equally, there are no major international superstars that would dare leave out Germany when coming to Europe.

SECONDARY TICKETING

© AEG BERLIN

According to Bremer, “The secondary ticketing market has grown considerably. Artists and promoters are intensifying their

Shawn Mendes performed at Berlin’s Mercedez-Benz Arena.

40 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

countermeasures: acts such as Ed Sheeran and Rammstein have successfully carried out full ticket-personalisation at their concerts. The media impact of these measures was enormous and hopefully helps to sensitise the public to the topic.”

When tickets for Sheeran’s biggest solo shows so far – two concerts at Hockenheimring, 22-23 June – went on sale, promoter FKP Scorpio obtained a temporary injunction against Viagogo from a Hamburg court.

Rammstein promoter MCT also made the resale of tickets illegal in its terms and conditions. Both promoters’ CEOs, Folkert Koopmans and Scumeck Sabottka, are founding members of the recently formed Facevalue European Alliance For Ticketing (FEAT), which aims to lobby the EU to come up with Europe-wide legislation against the practice of reselling tickets at huge mark-ups.

Eventim offers fans who can’t make a gig the opportunity to resell their ticket at face value via the company’s own fan-sale marketplace.

Apart from that, the usual suspects are live in Germany, including StubHub/eBay, Viagogo and Ticketbande.

SAP sees the secondary ticketing market as a meaningful addition to the primary market. “We offer our customers two different ways to use the secondary market for themselves,” Wohlrath explained. “On the one hand, we offer a fully integrated secondary ticketing tool in our solution, SAP Event Ticketing, and on the other hand, we offer bidirectional interfaces for the connection of external systems. Which of the options our partners use, or if they use them at all, is the decision of our partner.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS While more and more people opt to buy digital tickets, Germans love to have physical things. This not only becomes apparent in their love for CDs and vinyl but also for paper tickets. Steinhof believes CTS Eventim has a part to play in this, seeing that its bespoke fan tickets are still popular.

In general, the German ticket buyer is more price sensitive than many of their international counterparts, especially in the sports segment. What is more, there are still differences in the acceptance of payment methods in web shops, and there are still outlets that won’t accept certain credit cards.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

GREECE LANGUAGE GREEK POPULATION (MILLIONS) 10.8 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 27,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 7.4 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 59.5 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.7 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42.1 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 117 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 119

W

hile some professionals on the ground have assured ITY that Greece is on its way to recovery, the country’s most successful promoter, Giannis Paltoglou, owner of Detox Events and the individual behind Ejekt Festival, says: “the country is still going through extreme financial problems. Also, bureaucracy is a big issue.”

Despite the challenges, Paltoglou is looking back on a very strong year with many sold-out shows in big venues, including Madrugada, Dead Can Dance and Tindersticks. “Ejekt Festival, with The Cure as headliners, drew tens of thousands of people, making it the biggest show of the year in Greece,” he says.

Also making Paltoglou optimistic is the launch of Sónar Athens – the Greek edition of the pioneering international festival of electronic music and digital arts that originated in Barcelona – which will take place in October. “Fans, media and sponsors have welcomed it, so I have big hopes for this project,” the promoter says.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster is still among the country’s main ticket-sellers, alongside Viva.gr. Ticketmaster Greece CEO Stefanos Kakarantzas tells ITY: “We have seen real growth in the festival market due to the significant tax decrease in tickets, which has been a real positive for Greece. We are also seeing some new producers and clients entering the market, which is great.”

Kakarantzas expects to see “a big increase in the e-sports market here in Greece, following on from its continued growth globally.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS In Greece, much like in Germany, there is still the demand from fans to be able to buy tickets in person at a physical outlet. The festival selling most tickets in the country is a non-music event: Athens Street Food Festival, which counted some 150,000 visitors in its fourth year.

Non-music festivals are also the sector that Paltoglou expects to grow the most in the near future. It tends to be a late-buy market.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

HONG KONG LANGUAGES CANTONESE, MANDARIN, ENGLISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 7.2 CURRENCY DOLLAR GDP/CAPITA (US$) 61,400 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 6.1 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 76.1 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.9 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 44 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 94 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 121

© KITMIN LEE

Ticketflap handles ticketing for the 30,000-cap Clockenflap Festival.

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idespread local protests in the city at the time of writing have elevated Hong Kong to front-page news the world over. While some organisers have reported an uplift in ticket sales during the period, numerous event cancellations and postponements point to potentially related issues. The true effect of the local political environment on the sector overall will be determined in the months that follow.

PRIMARY TICKETING Hong Kong’s primary market is dominated by five players: HK Ticketing, Cityline, Urbtix, Ticketflap and Eventbrite. A slew of newer platforms – including Juven, TickCats, and Live Nation Entertainment’s Universe – have been aggressively challenging Eventbrite’s DIY event share by increasingly undercutting rates, though with limited success – with Universe recently dropping out completely from the city. “There’s a race to the bottom taking place right now with new entrants in the small-scale primary space,” says Ticketflap CEO Mike Hill. “As a result, we’ve focused on expansion and providing turnkey solutions for medium and large venues, integrated resorts and attractions, including: staff, equipment, RFID, marketing and more, which the smaller DIY solutions are not set up to provide.” Cityline general manager Joseph Lee agrees: “Organisers are increasingly looking for ticketing solutions that can offer the best experience for patrons beyond ticketing, including bundle deals; F&B voucher sales; ferry booking; on-site redemption and admission; usher support and others.” Established smaller digital platforms including Art Mate, Pelago and HK Clubbing round out the local ticketing offerings supporting targeted events/ audiences.

SECONDARY TICKETING Secondary ticketing remains a sensitive issue. As a result of local public outrage towards the secondary market, recent legislation requires an increase in the minimum percentage of tickets made available for public sale, rising from 20% to 30%, though it still remains low overall. “This, plus the fact that the ticket price for the same concert in Hong Kong is much lower than in China, creates an imbalance of

42 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

supply and demand, and hence makes for big business in the secondary market,” says Lee, adding, “It is not easy for true fans to buy tickets through primary sales channels, and [they] are therefore forced to pay a much higher price in the secondary market.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES The trend towards digital tickets and e-platforms continues apace, and Hong Kong’s mobile penetration presently registers at a staggering 259% (source: OFCA). In parallel, a couple of high-profile shows involving megastars Andy Lau and JJ Lin (where people lining up in the queue were attacked) meant an increase in cases where physical tickets have been omitted completely for first-day sales, limiting the presence of available physical tickets even further.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES “Local and Korean pop concerts are the most popular in Hong Kong,” says Lee. “We see that trend continuing alongside family events, exhibitions and festivals.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Hong Kong is known as an international, multicultural city, although it has traditionally failed to deliver the wide array of events/ genres that might be expected as a result, with question marks over the sustainability and size of the market. There are some signs of this changing. An increase in the number of small-scale venues in the city has contributed to a rise in the volume of shows over the last 12 months.

Similarly, new festivals/events have been announced, which along with Live Nation’s imminent comedy club, will further increase the live entertainment options in the city.

TAXES & CHARGES Hong Kong has no government sales tax on tickets. Platforms typically charge a per-ticket fee of between HK$7-11 (€0.80-1.26) plus payment processing. Companies offering physical tickets will additionally charge for delivery services.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

HUNGARY LANGUAGE HUNGARIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 9.9 CURRENCY FORINT GDP/CAPITA (US$) 29,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 7.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 54.7 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.7 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 51 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 62

© ROCKSTAR PHOTOGRAPHERS

Sziget festival operates its own ticketing system and pioneered a cashless system.

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ungary’s authoritarian government under Victor Orbán has a way of looking sinister. A new government-sponsored bill requires organisers of music festivals with more than 25,000 ticketholders to record each festival-goer’s personal details, plus a photograph, for up to 90 days before the start of the event.

The move is billed as a security measure aimed at combating crime and terrorism, and Hungary’s huge Sziget festival approves, saying it was already taking similar measures. But Orbán’s self-styled ‘illiberal democracy’ has been judged the least democratic country in the EU by civil liberties monitor Freedom House, so you wouldn’t necessarily put anything past them.

PRIMARY TICKETING Give or take some popular festivals in pleasant spots – such as Balaton Sound in Zamárdi or Volt in Sopron – Hungary’s live business focuses mainly on Budapest, and there is a competitive field of ticketers, of which the leading brand is Interticket’s Jegy.hu.

Contrary to last year’s ITY, the local Ticketpro platform was not part of the deal that took the Czech company of the same name into Ticketmaster. Still under managing director Barna Jardany, Ticketpro now operates the Funcode.hu brand and handles local Live Nation events, among other things. Other players include regional operator Ticketportal, Jegymester, Tixa and Eventim’s TEX – formerly Ticket Express – which operates as Eventim.hu.

Budapest’s Sziget Cultural Management, which is 70%-owned by the James Barton-led, Providence Equity Partners-backed festival specialist, Superstruct, operates its own ticketing platform and helped to pioneer cashless payment systems. Telekom VOLT Festival and Balaton Sound are within the same group.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES In Hungary, online is the key channel, with 80-85% of tickets for concerts, theatre, cultural and high-demand sporting events sold through the Internet in some fashion, according to Gyula Kovácska, managing director of TEX. Outlet networks and on-site sales cover the remaining proportion.

“In the case of regular sport events, such as league matches of football, ice hockey and basketball, box office sales, mainly on match

day, cover 70-90% [of all tickets sold],” she adds.

Tickets sold remotely are invariably of the print-at-home variety.

Somewhere in the region of 75-80% of total tickets and 90% of online sales employ that format, according to Kovácska.

VALUE OF MARKET There are no published estimates of the value of the Hungarian live business.

SECONDARY TICKETING There isn’t sufficient unsatisfied demand to spawn a thriving secondary sector. “Currently, the necessary requirements for a professional secondary market are missing,” says Kovácska. “There are no significant numbers of sold-out events.”

Sziget is clearly an exception and uses certified partner Tickething, as does Balaton Sound and Telekom Volt and local events such as Fesztivál Bánkitó, Kolorádó and Fridge Festival. Dutch firm Ticketswap also operates in Hungary, and Viagogo has a site, though it’s true that prices weren’t booming at press time.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Pop, rock and metal rule the roost here. “The summer season is dominated by festivals,” says Kovácska. “That’s why the summer is definitely low season in ticket sales.” The most popular of Hungary’s festivals, of course, is Sziget, which last year brought 565,000 to Hajógyári Island in the Danube – ‘sziget’ meaning ‘island’ in Hungarian.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The country has been working to position itself as a hub for blockchain and other technology. An e-ticketing trial for Budapest public transport was due for imminent launch at the time of writing and the system was expected to grow to cover the entire nation.

TAXES & CHARGES Hungary maintains the highest standard rate of VAT in Europe at 27%, though better deals are available to promoters under the right circumstances. Open-air festivals over a certain size pay at a rate of 18%.

Promoters below a certain turnover can also claim exemption.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 43

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

INDIA LANGUAGES HINDI, ENGLISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 1,296 CURRENCY RUPEE GDP/CAPITA (US$) 7,200 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 374.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 25.3 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 17.9 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 41.1 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 87 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 108

© NISHANTMATTA.COM

VH12 Supersonic is one of India’s big EDM festivals and partners with BookMyShow for ticketing.

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ndia is a market of more than 1.3 billion people, and while it represents myriad economic opportunities, it is also highly complex. It has numerous languages and cultures, heavily regionalised laws, huge inequality, and a growing middle class. Its ticketing market, however, is well developed, newly competitive and largely mobile-dependent. In practice, India’s huge cinema market is the main battleground for ticketing companies, though the sport and events sectors are both growing. The key to growth in the live entertainment ticketing sector will be the development of a venue circuit.

PRIMARY TICKETING Valued at $1billion (€0.9bn), BookMyShow is easily the dominant force in Indian ticketing over the past decade or so, but it has faced mighty new competition in recent years. The Alibaba-backed mobile payments giant Paytm bought wholeheartedly into the online ticketing market in 2017 when it picked up ticketing platforms Insider.in and TicketNew, and now commands comparable reach to BookMyShow, with both leading providers present in more than 650 cities and towns.

BookMyShow strengthened in response, buying rival ticketing startups Townscript and MastiTickets, and also diversified, acquiring digital entertainment firm Nfusion, and food and restaurant discovery platform Burrp. It is edging into event promotion – it will work with AEG to promote the NBA’s first Indian games in October – and recently inked a ticketing and content deal with Dubai’s new Coca-Cola Arena, as well as venturing into Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

In India, BookMyShow takes more than 15m ticket bookings a month and has more than 30m customers. Paytm sold 52m movie and events tickets in 2017 and has not released figures since, though it was said to be aiming for sales of 100m in 2018. Paytm has plenty of other irons in the fire – it reported last year that 50% of its movie-goers also use its mobile wallet app to pay for food, parking or taxis. BookMyShow remains the market leader, and analysts back it to stay there, particularly in India’s major cities, but it will never again be as comfortable as it once was.

Other ticketing companies include the sport-leaning Zoonga (formerly Kyazoonga) and Ticketgenie. Mumbai also has a branch of San Francisco-based, cloud-based events platform Ticket Fairy, which recently launched after an invitation-only phase.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Most tickets are bought online, and most of those are bought via

44 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

mobile. Kantar IMRB predicts that India will reach 627m Internet users this year, compared to 566m at the end of last year, of whom 97% use a mobile phone as one of their connected devices. Within the next ten years, one billion Indians will be on the Internet, almost all of them using smartphones [source: WARC].

VALUE OF MARKET Online ticketing was reckoned to be worth $330million (€295m) in 2017, according to local management consultant RedSeer, which also predicts revenues of $580m (€519m) by 2020. The lion’s share of that total (55%) comes from cinema ticketing, with sport on 25% and events taking the remaining 20%, though both latter categories are growing.

SECONDARY TICKETING Demand for live music in India is not sufficient to galvanise the secondary market.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The main showcase for international music in India is its EDM festival scene, which includes events such as Enchanted Valley Carnival, Magnetic Fields, Sunburn, Bacardi NH7 Weekender and Vh1 Supersonic.

Otherwise, give or take the odd Bieber, Sheeran or OneRepublic appearance, the main touring stars are Bollywood ‘playback’ singers.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS India remains deeply inequal, but its poverty reduction efforts in recent years have been successful. According to the World Bank, poverty in India dropped from 38.9% to 21.2% between 2004 and 2014.

India is on course to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, with 44 Indians coming out of extreme poverty every minute [source: Brookings].

TAXES & CHARGES Taxes on entertainment events vary in India depending on the state, though a nationwide goods and service tax (GST), introduced two years ago, has simplified tariffs. An additional service tax stands at 15%.

Ticketing companies charge promoters between 4% and 8% of the ticket price, with a 2% charge to the consumer.

Ticketing companies including Paytm and BookMyShow are in the spotlight in India for allegedly imposing Internet handling fees that are illegal under the IT Act of 2016.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

IRELAND LANGUAGES ENGLISH, GAELIC POPULATION (MILLIONS) 5.0 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 73,200 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 73.8% SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 25.3 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.9 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42.8 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 157 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 204

3Arena in Dublin is ticketed by Ticketmaster.

and Longitude; and Ed Sheeran promoter Aiken operates Vicar Street, Live at the Marquee in Cork, Live at the Iveagh Gardens, the new Eastbound Festival in Dublin, and the Harvest Country Music Festival.

Tickets.ie is the key challenger, focusing largely on all levels of sport, indie festivals and music and comedy club shows. Its parent, Oshi Software, offers large-scale ticketing solutions internationally.

Ticketmaster’s TicketWeb, meanwhile, covers the independent circuit of music, comedy and other events.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Online – desktop, mobile and app – accounts for the majority of ticket sales in Ireland, and most tickets are print-at-home, with a reasonable number of physical tickets still sold to walk-up customers.

As with everywhere else, mobile only grows. “Last year, we scanned hundreds of thousands of mobile tickets through the doors of events across Ireland,” says English. “That looks likely to treble this year, with all major stadium and outdoor events now mobile enabled.”

VALUE OF MARKET Research from 2017 shows that the Irish economy, north and south, makes €1.7billion a year from live entertainment, as every €1 spent on tickets generates a further €6.06 in additional spending [source: Fáilte Ireland/IMRO].

SECONDARY TICKETING

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reland is back on firm ground after the miseries of the 2008-13 downturn, and while Brexit promises further trouble, Irish consumers are buying tickets in healthy numbers once more – mostly from Ticketmaster. The market-leader’s managing director Keith English says 2019 represents a new high-water mark for the Irish business. “Summer 2019 will be the busiest ever for outdoor events and major concerts,” he predicted as the holidays began. “Festivals have already grown dramatically, both in numbers and size.”

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster is the leader in Ireland, and so it seems destined to remain. In July, the Republic of Ireland’s Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) cleared the acquisition of MCD Productions by LN-Gaiety Holdings (LNG) – a joint venture between Live Nation UK and Denis Desmond’s Gaiety Investments.

The conditions of the deal include two that relate to ticketing: a promise that MCD and Ticketmaster will negotiate ticketing contracts with each other at arm’s-length, each acting “independently and in its own interest”; and a pledge, on the part of MCD, not to refuse to provide events to an independent venue that doesn’t use Ticketmaster. The merger remains under review in the UK from the Consumer and Markets Authority (CMA).

Even as it is, the strength of Ticketmaster in Ireland is remarkable. It handles ticketing for both its sister company and main rival Aiken Promotions, which between them account for most of the key venues, big shows and notable festivals.

Live Nation, for example, operates Dublin’s 3Arena as well as the city’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, The Olympia, The Gaiety, Electric Picnic

Ireland has been waging war on touts and bots for years, with persuasive input from MPs, promoters and sports governing bodies, and some measure of victory is apparently in sight. A ban on bots is on its way through the Oireachtas, Ireland’s national parliament, as part of a bill that will also prohibit the touting of tickets by unauthorised persons at above face value – to the ongoing objections of Viagogo. Ticketmaster launched its fan-to-fan ticket exchange in March.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Ireland makes large amounts of its own music, for export and for personal use, but it’s a very international market too. The charts and the live schedules showcase everything going, spiced with local stars such as Mick Flannery, Dermot Kennedy, Gavin James and Dublin rappers Versatile, not to mention Irish international successes such as Westlife, Hozier and The Cranberries. Every significant international tour stops in Dublin or Belfast or both, while Irish artists including Dermot Kennedy, Gavin James and rockers Kodaline can fill arenas at home, and clubs are bursting with homegrown talent.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced in May that it would be joining the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) in investigating last year’s acquisition of leading concert promoter MCD Productions by Live Nation’s LN-Gaiety Holdings, a subsidiary. MCD founder Denis Desmond has been the chairman of Live Nation UK and Ireland since 2015.

TAXES & CHARGES The service charge on tickets is typically 12.5%, which includes any taxes and is capped at €6.85.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 45

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

ISRAEL LANGUAGES HEBREW, ARABIC POPULATION (MILLIONS) 8.4 CURRENCY SHEKEL GDP/CAPITA (US$) 36,400 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 6.5 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 71 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 15.5 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 37.2 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 31 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 35

T

he general consensus in Israel when IQ Magazine profiled the market earlier in 2019, was that the live business was heading into another slow year. Certainly, this summer’s line-up in Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Park – effectively just Bon Jovi in July – scarcely compares to the heights of 2017, when Radiohead, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears, the Pet Shop Boys, Aerosmith and Justin Bieber all came through.

In the broader analysis, Israel continues to develop – Live Nation and Ticketmaster have moved in, in recent years, to join Eventim and a clutch of busy independents – but there is also a sense that the international clamour for a cultural boycott is taking its toll.

“Artists are saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on there, it’s too complicated, I don’t need this shit. I’m going to play two more shows in Germany,” Shuki Weiss senior promoter, Oren Arnon, told IQ Magazine in February. Nonetheless, the business is still here and unlikely to go away: Israel produces plenty of native artists, with Bon Jovi, J Balvin, Jennifer Lopez, Joe Bonamassa and Tears For Fears among the visitors on the schedules at the time of writing.

Avenged Sevenfold played in Israel.

Israel’s leading ticketing names are Zappa and Kupat, which handle around 80% of total ticket sales. Eventim, Ticketmaster are also prominent. Eventim gave the market an important technological update in 2011, and this year opened a research and development centre in Israel – the company’s first development operation outside of Germany.

The ticketer will use its new centre to predict the popularity of events, using data from sources such as Last.fm, Spotify and Google.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have built on the business of local promoter Bluestone Group since 2017. The promoter brought Avenged Sevenfold, Martin Garrix, The Chainsmokers, Alanis Morissette, Enrique Iglesias and others to Israel last year, as well as debuting its Wow Festival, and Ticketmaster Israel mainly focuses at this stage on its sister company’s events.

Eventim and Kupat Tel Aviv are strong on local names, reflectively a slightly quiet time for international appearances in Israel, while another local operator, Leaan Tickets, has been operating for more than 50 years.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Mobile and online are the key channels for Israeli ticket-buyers, though call centres and box offices are still in operation. Print-at-home is the most common ticket type.

VALUE OF MARKET Data on the Israeli market is fairly scant, but estimates put the live music market in Israel at around $31million (€28m) in 2018.

SECONDARY TICKETING The Knesset outlawed ticket scalping in Israel in 2002, though the law applies only to “unlicensed persons.” Viagogo operates in any case, and Israel’s Consumer Protection Authority warns against purchasing tickets from the platform “due to lack of coverage and excessive fees.”

© RAFA ALCANTARA

PRIMARY TICKETING

are popular local flavours.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Israel is a dogged live music market, and a profoundly controversial one. The fact that it keeps drawing artists, in spite of international condemnation of its occupation of Gaza, and the challenges of travel, is a tribute to the persistence of local promoters.

Lana Del Rey was among the most recent artists to cancel a show there, pulling out of an appearance at Israel’s Meteor Festival because she was unable to schedule a corresponding appearance in Palestine.

After a chastened Lorde cancelled in Tel Aviv in 2017, three Israeli teenagers issued a civil suit against two New Zealand women who had written urging the singer to cancel, alleging that their “artistic welfare” had been damaged. They were awarded more than NZ$18,000 (€10,676) by an Israeli court, under a 2011 law that allows civil action against those who encourage a boycott of Israel.

The Kiwi pair, Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab, declined to pay, but instead raised nearly NZ$42,000 (€24,900) through a crowdfunding site for mental health organisations in Gaza.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Heritage rock acts and Western stars in general do well in Israel.

Nick Cave has defended playing there, while Roger Waters and Brian Eno are among the prominent naysayers. EDM, Mizrahi pop and hip-hop

46 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

TAXES & CHARGES VAT in Israel is 17% and there is a 5 shekel (€1.25) handling fee added to tickets purchased online.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

ITALY LANGUAGE ITALIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 62.2 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 38,200 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 38.0 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 63.2 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.7 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42.2 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 635 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 725

Ultimo performs at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

areas. TicketOne sells 60% of tickets online and expects in-app sales to hit 20% in a couple of years.

Ticketmaster has high hopes for new technologies, including digital tickets, which will be coming soon. “Digital tickets will be the real revolution here, introducing fans to a completely new concept of live events,” says Bei.

VALUE OF MARKET PwC put Italian ticket sales at €563million in 2017, with a further €165m in sponsorship.

SECONDARY TICKETING

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taly has been a thoroughly entertaining market over the past few years, scorched by secondary-ticketing scandals, competition probes, thumping fines and successful appeals against thumping fines. Beneath the clamour, however, the Italian ticketing narrative is a relatively conventional one: Eventim in first, Ticketmaster gunning for them, Viagogo battling legislators in its efforts to map out a sustainable model.

PRIMARY TICKETING TicketOne, Eventim’s long-term market leader, has recently railed against the lack of sanctions for secondary ticketers, all the while fighting hard to maintain its dominance in the face of a concerted push from a familiar global rival.

Ticketmaster Italy, which launched in 2017 after the conclusion of a long-term Italian partnership between Live Nation and TicketOne, has been making gains under managing director Daniele Bei. In 2018, it announced partnerships with Italian independent festival promoter Home Entertainment and leading venue operator Zed Entertainment.

TicketOne evidently foresaw the Live Nation/Ticketmaster push, and spent 2017 and 2018 snapping up Italian promoters. It remains the one to beat – as well as its musical strength, TicketOne boasts a network of 2,000 physical outlets and has a heavy presence in sport, for which it introduced a sport portal last year offering virtual 360-degree views when choosing tickets.

“Competition has never been as fierce as today,” says TicketOne CEO Stefano Lionetti. “Numerous international and digital powerhouses have already entered the market, while many more are planning to do so. The main target for TicketOne, in order to maintain its market leadership, is to serve its customers and the fans with the highest level of technologies, best marketing practices and great customer experience.”

Meanwhile, 20-year-old Best Union rebranded as Vivaticket last year, in line with its ticketing arm, having previously absorbed rival BookingShow. It operates in Italy – where its clients include AC Milan, AS Roma and Barley Arts, which split with TicketOne in 2017 – and internationally, supplying ticketing and other technology to theatres, leisure parks, trade shows and sporting events and teams in 50 countries.

Finally, the third biggest is Ticketmaster, which tickets Live Nation shows.

Viagogo has been in the cross-hairs of Italian legislators in recent times, and in March 2018 the Italian competition and markets authority, the Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) nearly tripled a previously imposed fine for misleading advertising and unfair practices to €1m.

However, in July 2019, Viagogo succeeded in arguing that it is a “passive hosting provider,” and therefore not responsible for ensuring sellers provide all the ticket information required by law. The AGCM now needs to hand back the fine. The development came just days after TicketOne threatened to refer Italian communications regulator AGCOM (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) to the judiciary for its failure to hold Viagogo and StubHub to applicable laws.

“The government issued a new law at year end [to impose] a full prohibition of sales at increased price and is introducing personal tickets from mid-2019,” says Lionetti. “But for now, the scalping prohibition hasn’t been actively [enforced], so TicketOne is formally challenging the authorities to apply the law. The secondary market gets a lot of attention,” he adds, “but real volumes are unknown and are maybe not as big as they seem.”

Back in March 2018, AGCOM imposed a €1m fine on TicketOne for allegedly facilitating illicit ticket resale, though a court later rejected the verdict and ordered this fine, too, to be refunded.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Though anecdotally Italy is opening up to the wider musical world a little more than before, local artists retain substantial power and typically account for about 75% of shows. Local rap and trap artists are popular – watch out for Ultimo, who was the third-bestselling artist last year and will be touring stadiums in 2020.

Festivals, too, are on the up. “Without a doubt, they become more popular every year,” says Bei. “This means that there is a large margin of growth in the next few years. Italian fans love attending live, engaging events where they can live a 360° experience.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Italy has had a colourful year in general, amid the ongoing rise of its political right embodied by deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, a controversial anti-migrant stance, and EU disapproval of its debt problems.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES In Italy, where physical tickets still occupy a place in many hearts, tickets can still be bought through bars, newsagents and other physical outlets, though print-at-home, mobile and e-tickets are the growth

TAXES & CHARGES The broad rate of VAT in Italy is 22%, but concerts and other live entertainment benefit from a reduced rate of 10%.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 47

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

JAPAN LANGUAGE JAPANESE POPULATION (MILLIONS) 126.1 CURRENCY YEN GDP/CAPITA (US$) 42,900 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 116.6 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 47.8 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 37.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 1,659 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 1,843

A

s the host of next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan’s ticketing market has been under the microscope of late, as politicians and regulators work diligently to remove any loopholes that might see Olympic tickets changing hands illegitimately.

Away from sport, the nation’s live entertainment scene is heavily dominated by domestic talent, which makes up an estimated 85% share of the market. International acts take just a 10% cut, while South Korea’s K-pop makes up the remainder.

The vast islands nation and its large population, however, don’t tend to witness many multi-date tours, as visiting acts tend to touch down only in the Kanto area (Tokyo and Yokohama), which boasts around 40% of all performances; and the Kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe), which accounts for a further 20% of dates.

Metrock festival is organised by ticketing firm Pia.

PRIMARY TICKETING Japan’s ticketing business is controlled by industry giants Ticket Pia, e+ and Lawson HMV Entertainment. In mid-2018, Pia announced a joint venture with Yahoo! Japan and Mitsui & Co to launch Dynamic Plus, an initiative that is now rolling out dynamic pricing.

“Getting many people to watch [sports] at stadia is one of our missions, and dynamic pricing can be very effective as a solution,” states Pia Corporation director, Motoharu Murakami. “Dynamic pricing has already been introduced to soccer and rugby, and is expected to be spread to other entertainment events.”

Primary ticketing historically relies upon Japan’s comprehensive network of convenience stores that house machines linked to ticketing agencies’ online platforms – Pia, for instance, has deals with 7-Eleven, Circle K/Sunkus and Family Mart. These convenience-store machines use thermal till receipts that are commonly swapped for actual tickets on entry to a venue.

Asked whether the symbiotic relationship with convenience stores is under threat from online business models, Murakami says, “These relationships can bring significant benefits to convenience stores as well as event organisers and ticket agencies. We guess ticketing will go more online, [but existing] relationships could continue for a while, as convenience stores are a pivotal sales network.”

Other primary players in Japan include the likes of self-service ticketing provider Peatix, which exploits social media marketing to entice event organisers to use its services.

SECONDARY TICKETING In late 2018, Japanese politicians approved a law to criminalise unauthorised resale. The legislation bans ticket touting, both online and outside venues, for all shows where the organiser has prohibited resale – in practice, the majority of promoters. Anyone who violates the new law, which encompasses both paper and electronic tickets, may be punished with a one-year prison sentence, a fine of up to ¥1million (€8,290), or both. The new law was widely expected ahead of next year’s Olympics and the 2025 World Expo.

Prior to the new law, resale operators included TicketStreet, Ticket Ryutsa Center and Ticket Camp, while many fans obtained tickets through Internet auction sites such as Yahoo! Auctions and Rakuten Auction, and mobile apps like merkuri.

Ticket Pia also has a face-value ticket exchange called Ticketore.

“Since the anti-ticket-touting law was enacted in December, 2018,

48 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Tiketore has attracted more attention and gained [in] popularity,” says Pia’s Murakami. “With the set-up of official resale online sites for 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, as well as the enforcement of the anti-ticket-touting law in June 2019, a healthier resale culture [is being] established.”

VALUE OF MARKET Japan’s concert industry hit record numbers in both 2017 and 2018, according to the All-Japan Concert and Live Entertainment Promoters Conference, as the country retained its position as the second biggest music market in the world.

In 2017, the live sector was worth ¥32billion (about €2.7bn), while in 2018 it grew by a further 3.7% to ¥33.5bn (€2.8bn), despite a small fall in the number of annual shows.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS A shortage of major venues has forced event organisers to be creative, resulting in the use of unconventional venues such as galleries, cafés and various rented spaces. This situation has been exacerbated by preparations for the 2020 Olympics, which have taken a number of venues, including touring favourite, Nippon Budokan, out of commission.

Despite being the most historic ticketing business, Ticket Pia is not afraid to break with convention and in recent years has operated its Metrock festivals in Tokyo and Osaka, while Pia’s parent company is also trying to change the venues stalemate by constructing its own arena, due to open in Yokohama next year.

“This is the first case in Japan where a private company builds and manages a 10,000-sized arena on its own,” says Murakami, noting the radical move’s significance to the corporation’s growth strategy. “Pia, building co-operative relationships with industry partners, will create new content, plan a variety of events, and thus grow Japan’s entertainment market.”

TAXES & CHARGES Convenience store ticket machines charge a selling commission of ¥216 (€1.66), a system fee of ¥210 (€1.61) and a ticketing fee of ¥105 (€0.80) per ticket, including VAT. A typical breakdown of administration fees includes an agency commission of 8%, plus a paper cost of ¥10.5 (€0.08) per ticket.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

LUXEMBOURG LANGUAGES LUXEMBOURGISH, FRENCH, GERMAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 0.6 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 106,300 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 0.6 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 91 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 12.2 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 44.8

L

uxembourg’s geographic location, coupled with the grand duchy’s economy, has done much to keep the country’s live entertainment sector buoyant. Bordered by Belgium, France and Germany, the country attracts fans from its neighbours, as well as further afield from the Netherlands and even the UK for big name tours.

Esch-sur-Alzette’s 6,500-capacity Rockhal arena is the jewel in its crown, backed by three clubs that host international acts – den Atelier and the Rotondes cultural centre in Luxembourg City, and the 1,100-capacity Rockhal Box.

SECONDARY TICKETING “Viagogo is still an issue, unfortunately,” says Roscheck, “but fans are becoming more aware of the issues, so maybe things will change.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES With such a tiny indigenous population, Luxembourg’s domestic talent accounts for a small proportion of its shows. However, with large French, Flemish and German speakers, acts from those countries can sell out the Rockhal, while English-language acts take the lion’s share of dates.

PRIMARY TICKETING Rockhal and den Atelier operate their own ticket platforms, but also sell through agents in France, Germany and Belgium, with Eventim and Ticketmaster acting as distributors for events in Luxembourg. However, Rockhal is looking for a new ticketing partner, with marketing manager Thomas Roscheck telling ITY an announcement is due in 2020.

Luxembourg is also the base for entertainment insurance specialists, Circles Group, which offers ticketing coverage internationally. “Circle Ticketing enables any ticketing platform to provide worldwide cancellation protection to ticket purchasers via an API: no proof required, refunded in less than 72 hours via an online interface,” explains Tom Beke, Circle’s head of sales.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Roscheck says the Rockhal venues enjoyed a very strong 2018 – with 250,000 visitors – while 2019 is slightly down in numbers. “Having that international visibility across the border is key for us, so partners like Eventim and Ticketmaster are important,” he adds.

TAXES & CHARGES The local tax on tickets is 3%, while service charges vary.

seats.io

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

MEXICO LANGUAGE SPANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 125.9 CURRENCY PESO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 19,900 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 73.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 39.8 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 17.5 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 41 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 182 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 216

when CIE announced that Ticketmaster Mexico would no longer assert exclusive ticketing rights in third-party venues. The deal, voluntarily reached against the backdrop of an investigation by Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission’s (Cofece) into possible monopolistic practices in the live entertainment business, opens up 320 venues to competition, including Centro Cultural Telmex in Mexico City, Parque Fundidora in Monterrey, and the Jalisco Stadium and Telmex Auditorium in Guadalajara.

CIE-operated buildings such as the Foro Sol ampitheatre or the neighbouring indoor arena Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City remain under sole Ticketmaster control.

Other ticketing operators in Mexico include Don Boletón, which is strong in the northern border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, as well as Eventbrite’s Ticketea, self-service specialist Boletia, and CIE’s other ticketing platform Eticket, which is bound by the same pledge as Ticketmaster.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Ticketmaster has more than 300 points of sale in various chains across Mexico, as well as online and social sales and telephone service centres, though the involvement of its North American counterpart is likely to at least accelerate the ongoing modernisation of the market.

Online and mobile are already winning the war in the long-term, and Superboletos, while maintaining its own physical network, focuses chiefly on electronic tickets.

Arena Ciudad de México is owned by Avalanz Group’s Zignia Live, which also owns the ticketing company Superboletos.

VALUE OF MARKET Around 7m tickets are sold every year for live music shows in Mexico, where the overall market was valued at $225m (€201m) in 2016.

SECONDARY TICKETING

M

exico has impressed the world by keeping its cool while being slandered and menaced by Trump. This is a huge music country. Equally significant as a major international tour stop and a self-sufficient market in its own right, Mexico has a large, Ticketmasterdominated ticketing sector that has latterly been seen to address one or two competition issues.

PRIMARY TICKETING To a degree, ticketing and promoting go hand in hand in Mexico.

CIE, part-owner of the country’s largest promoter Ocesa, has for years operated the local division of Ticketmaster, through which it sells more than 37m tickets a year, including 3.8m for Ocesa’s own events.

That relationship moved to the next level this summer with longtime partner Live Nation’s announcement that it will acquire a 51% controlling stake in Ocesa, including Ticketmaster Mexico and some 14 venues. The deal will likely be completed by the end of the year, and the alliance of the leading live companies in the US and Mexico offers intriguing potential for the sharing of both technology and talent.

Ocesa’s main promoting rival, Avalanz Group’s Zignia Live, owns Superboletos, which in turn provides Ticketmaster with its main – albeit fairly distant – competition. Superboletos’ business is less mighty than that of Ticketmaster Mexico, but it supplies ticketing for Arena Ciudad de México and Arena Monterrey, the country’s two busiest arenas, and its sales stand at around 3 million a year.

October 2018 brought the possibility of movement into the market,

Touting on the street is illegal in Mexico, though reselling online isn’t. It is reckoned that as many as 40% of the country’s tickets have a second life, sold via WhatsApp, through Stubhub or Mexican company Bolettos.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Mexico is proudly patriotic and its own music remains hugely popular within its own borders, with mariachi, ranchero and norteño the most prominent indigenous styles. International stars include Paulina Rubio, Thalía, Gloria Trevi, Luis Miguel, Pepe Aguilar and, if you think about it, Carlos Santana.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Mexico City is home to 22m people, and it is also well-known as the world capital of streaming, directly ahead of Santiago, Chile, and New York City. At last year’s Corona Capital Festival, headliners as diverse as Robbie Williams, Imagine Dragons, Nine Inch Nails and the Chemical Brothers unanimously counted Mexico City as their numberone streaming market by monthly listenership. The streaming surge has helped to consolidate the Mexican capital’s already strong appeal to international live acts.

TAXES & CHARGES VAT on tickets in Mexico is 16% and booking fees are high, often hitting 20%.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 51

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

THE NETHERLANDS LANGUAGE DUTCH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 17.1 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 53,900 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 15.4 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 73.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 12.1 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 39.1 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 626 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 693

Lowlands Festival is one of the country’s many busy events.

Coming in second and third are CTS Eventim and Paylogic, though it’s hard to say who’s ahead in terms of market share. The latter was acquired by SeeTickets, a wholly owned subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi, in 2018.

The Netherlands is also home to one of the few blockchain-based ticketing agencies that managed to make noise in the space despite tiny volumes: GUTS Tickets. In the simplest form, GUTS has come up with a technology that prevents unwanted third parties from intervening in the ecosystem between event organiser and the end consumer. “We definitely are not yet among the top ranks in terms of ticket sales.

However, in 2019, GUTS managed to attract big and prestigious clients, who came from the traditional ticketing companies,” says Biggs, who is responsible for marketing and communications at the company.

In the theatre and performing arts space, Ticketmatic is still the market leader, according to Marijcke Voorsluijs, project manager at TOTheater.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Around 95% of tickets are sold online. “Last year, we saw our only remaining brick-and-mortar retail partner Primera (450 stores) cease its hardcopy ticket activities,” explains Henk Schuit, managing director of Eventim NL, adding that “due to the nature of Eventim NL’s core business (mainly musicals), it’s still viable to provide our organisers and customers with the opportunity to buy tickets through our own call/customer service centre.”

Like in so many other countries in Europe, the shift towards mobile ticketing is fully underway in the Netherlands, even if print-at-home still looks like it’s slightly ahead. Pop/rock are the best-selling genres with e-sports emerging as an event genre with great ticket-selling potential. © BART HEEMSKERK

SECONDARY TICKETING

T

he Netherlands is still one of the most vibrant live events markets in the world. EM Cultuur estimates that Dutch festivals alone will see some 19.5 million visitors in 2019. Thus, the Dutch ticketing market is a highly competitive one.

“In order to have a chance for success in the Dutch ticketing industry,” said Olivier Biggs of GUTS, a relatively new player in the market, “you really need a product that’s distinguishable from the rest.”

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster is the market leader for music ticketing in the Netherlands. It’s a market with high smartphone penetration. Aukina Buining, CEO of Ticketmaster NL, observed “a further shift to mobile in the last year, resulting not only from fan demand but also our fan-first platform that makes browsing and ticket-buying on mobile so much easier.”

The company launched its DIY offering Universe in the Netherlands last year, after “seeing an increase in clients wanting to be more in control of their ticketing.”

52 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

According to Schuit, “the call for technical answers regarding the secondary market is becoming stronger.” Eventim’s face-value ticket exchange fanSALE is live in the Netherlands. GUTS also allows for the face-value resale of tickets on its platform.

The biggest reseller in the Netherlands is TicketSwap, which sets a resale premium of a maximum of 20%. “In many cases, the scalpers seem fine with 20%, thus simply use TicketSwap,” said Biggs, adding that reselling also took place on other platforms such as Marktplaats, the “Dutch eBay.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Schuit tells ITY that self-service ticketing start-ups were beginning to pop up like mushrooms in the Netherlands, giving event organisers more solutions to choose from. “This mostly seems to affect the selfservice ticketing segment, where these start-ups battle each other.”

Schuit believes this development is a result of the fact that “the Dutch have been inventive for centuries. Battling the status quo seems to be in our nature.”

TAXES & CHARGES The Netherlands experienced a VAT increase from 6 to 9%, which, in many cases, resulted in slightly higher ticketing prices but no significant impact of sales, according to Schuit.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

NEW ZEALAND LANGUAGES ENGLISH, MAORI POPULATION (MILLIONS) 4.5 CURRENCY NEW ZEALAND DOLLAR GDP/CAPITA (US$) 39,000 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 4.0 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 70 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 39.1 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 39.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 107 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 130

Arena and is run by Scottish-born industry veteran Stuart Clumpas, who took the top job in 2018. In the same year, LN New Zealand acquired a controlling interest in Rhythm & Vines Festival. The promoter is expanding its outdoor concert activities with the January 2020 launch of the Soper Reserve Series of gigs at a green-field site in Mount Maunganui. The promoter expects to host 28,000 live music fans over its eight-show run.

LN’s partner C3 Presents rolled out its City Limits brand in Auckland in 2015 with the 2018 event headlined by Beck, Justice and Future. At the time of writing, the 2019 event had not been announced.

Building local infrastructure and expertise, especially outside Auckland, are essential building blocks to growing the live business, local promoters say. “Christchurch needs new venues. The infrastructure rebuild still has a way to go,” notes Clumpas.

VALUE OF MARKET

N

ew Zealand is no longer in Australia’s shadow. The land of the long white cloud has its own, thriving music scene, which is crossing borders, led by the likes of Broods, Six60, Gin Wigmore and Lorde, who recently announced she’d started work on the follow-up to her Billboard 200 chart-leading second album, Melodrama. NZ’s recorded music industry is on the up, powered by streaming music services, and its live economy is growing. “NZ is happening,” says Frontier Touring chief Michael Gudinski.

In 2017, the NZ music industry earned an estimated $126million (€113m) in live performance revenues, based on public performance royalties collected by APRA AMCOS. The total economic impact of live ballooned to $168m (€152m), with homegrown content accounting for 28% of the sum. The live performance area has been “relatively volatile over recent years, primarily as a result of the scheduling of different tours,” according to the 2017 Economic Contribution of the Music Industry report. The year 2017 was “significantly better” than 2016, but not as strong as the extraordinary year in 2015, according to the report. The document, commissioned by Recorded Music NZ with the support of APRA AMCOS and The NZ Music Commission, was conducted by PwC. The OneMusic New Zealand joint licensing venture between APRA AMCOS and Recorded Music NZ was established in 2014 and has been seen as a success story, paving the way for the launch of a OneMusic Australia joint license in Australia in 2019, an alliance of APRA AMCOS and PPCA. Public performance of music contributed $39m (€35m) to the economy and produced the equivalent of 350 full-time jobs, according to the PwC report.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES PRIMARY TICKETING The two giants of Australia’s ticketing business, Ticketmaster and Ticketek, are also the twin towers of New Zealand’s market. Increasingly, international touring acts making the trip to Australia will also add dates in New Zealand, usually at Auckland’s 12,000-capacity Spark Arena (formerly Vector Arena) or Mt Smart Stadium. Indeed, Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour is pencilled in to play six shows in NZ, including three at Mt Smart Stadium. International tours regularly drop in at Dunedin, the second-largest city on the south island (after Christchurch) and a market that outpaces Adelaide for ticket sales, local promoters say.

In the months ahead, Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin will host concerts by Elton John, Queen, and Fleetwood Mac, which features legendary local artist Neil Finn in its touring line-up.

The NZ live market “seems very strong,” says Michael Chugg, whose company Chugg Entertainment reports 160,000 tickets sold for Elton John’s upcoming trek, while Laneway Festival and shows by Florence Welch and Billie Eilish were “very successful, sell-outs basically.”

Live Nation’s business in NZ includes the 12,000-capacity Spark

Like Australia, NZ punters typically buy tickets through online platforms, which account for some 90% of sales, a figure that can be split 50/50 online to mobile. New Zealanders are embracing digital tickets.

“Fans want an easier and more secure ticketing system, which fits seamlessly into their lives,” notes Maria O’Connor, managing director of Ticketmaster Australia and New Zealand. This year, Ticketmaster acquired Moshtix, helmed by New Zealand-born Harley Evans. “We’re combining their innovative technology in the general admission and self-service space with our current technologies,” O’Connor says.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Venues in New Zealand are typically tied to an exclusive ticketing supplier. Ticketek works with a raft of venues including Christchurch’s Horncastle Arena and Orangetheory Stadium (formerly AMI Stadium) while Ticketmaster handles ticketing for Mt Smart Stadium, Westpac Stadium in Wellington, Forsyth Barr Stadium and Spark Arena.

In time, Clumpas anticipates more one-day, outdoor, city-event type shows, and a “slight growth” in camping festivals. Kiwis, he says, are “definitely gig lovers.”

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 53

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

NORWAY LANGUAGES NORWEGIAN, SAMI POPULATION (MILLIONS) 5.4 CURRENCY KRONE GDP/CAPITA (US$) 71,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 5.1 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 79.3 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 12.3 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 40 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 304 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 318

among younger consumers. “Mobile traffic and mobile conversion now finally outperform desktop after continued growth year-on-year,” says Kristian Seljeset, managing director of Ticketmaster Norway and Sweden. “The same applies for mobile payment methods, which are now exceedingly popular with fans.”

VALUE OF MARKET The Norwegian concert business was worth NOK2.6billion (€270million) in 2017 – more than half of the NOK4.9bn (€510m) total value of the Norwegian music business [source: Rambøll Management Consulting/Arts Council Norway].

SECONDARY TICKETING In common with Denmark, and a little behind Sweden, Norway is experiencing a rising tide of secondary sales, in spite of local laws that make resale at higher than face value illegal. “It is a huge annoyance for the local promoters and consumers in all of Scandinavia,” says Jens B. Arnesen, CEO of Eventim Scandinavia. “Many ticket buyers are lured to the illegal sites through digital advertising and end up paying an exorbitant price for their tickets or, even worse, end up at events with invalid tickets.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The soon-to-reopen Trondheim Spektrum will have a 12,000 capacity. It will be ticketed by CTS Eventim and Ticketmaster.

T

he smallest but wealthiest of the four Scandinavian nations, Norway is a mightily prosperous, oil-rich spot and the home of new star Sigrid. International acts stream through and local acts do the bulk of the detailed touring, while Ticketmaster and Eventim slug it out over tickets.

PRIMARY TICKETING The last couple of years have seen the retirement of Norway’s old local ticketing brands. Billettservice has been the market leader since 1977, selling 5m tickets a year to more than 1,000 events, but latter-day owner Ticketmaster has gradually phased out the name and standardised the branding.

Eventim, having taken full control of Scandinavia-wide Egmont joint venture Venuepoint, has done likewise, turning Billetportalen into Eventim.no this year. So, as in so many other territories, it’s Ticketmaster vs Eventim, and in Norway, the Americans have the lead.

Bergen-based TicketCo, meanwhile, is a cloud-based ticketing and event B2B solution with an international focus, and it has processed 7m tickets and other items (€160m-worth) since its launch in 2013. It has offices in Norway, Sweden, Poland and the UK, and specialises in sport, festivals and other live events.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Print-at-home is the most popular method of delivery in Scandinavia, though mobile solutions are much in demand, particularly

54 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

International stars tend to flock to Oslo, and to an extent, Bergen and Trondheim, while local artists are the bread and butter of smaller venues and smaller cities. Sigrid is Norway’s biggest success story in years, but there’s also A-ha, of course, as well as Röyksopp, Lindstrøm, Aurora, Alan Walker and Anna of the North.

Festivals in the capital include Øyafestivalen, Live Nation’s Findings, Norwegian Wood, OverOslo, and Picnic in the Park, while Bergen has Bergenfest, which welcomed Bon Iver, Clean Bandit and Robert Plant this summer.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Norway is excited about the redevelopment of the Trondheim Spektrum, which reopens its doors in the autumn with a concert by John Mayer. Reconfigured and with a capacity of 12,000, the venue is far from the world’s most northerly concert hall – Murmansk, Tromsø and Reykjavík knock it into a cocked hat, from that perspective – but the surprise is how many artists are making the trip to central Norway.

“It’s been very interesting to see some of the smaller cities, not as well-known for live events, performing increasingly well,” says Seljeset.

“Trondheim, in particular, has established itself as a location for even the biggest acts that visit Norway. Trondheim Spektrum opens in October so we expect to see some exciting gigs taking place there in the years to come.”

As well as Mayer, A-ha are booked in for February 2020, and Deep Purple, Backstreet Boys and Avicii made the trip in former times. Eventim and Ticketmaster have agreed a multi-year partnership that will see them provide ticketing, CRM and data analytics to the venue, which will host the 2020 European Handball Championships.

TAXES & CHARGES Music, classical and comedy tickets are all exempt from Norway’s 25% VAT, though tickets for sporting events are subject to a tax of 10%.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

POLAND LANGUAGE POLISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 38.5 CURRENCY ZLOTY GDP/CAPITA (US$) 29,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 28.2 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 54 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.7 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 149 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 153

A strong economy is driving the market for live entertainment at venues such as the Ergo Arena.

P

oland is one of the most dynamically growing markets in Eastern Europe, and the economic growth of recent years has led to increased disposable income among the population. This in turn means more people are buying tickets to live events, which is great news for promoters, who have a solid case to make in front of international agents.

“We’re doing pretty well as a country when it comes to our economy, and people are able to afford higher priced tickets for more elaborate (and therefore expensive) productions. I think that at the moment, Poland can be considered on par with many other European markets and this creates many new and exciting opportunities for our local market,” says Mariola Dziubińska, managing director of Metal Mind Productions.

According to Mateusz Pawlicki of promoter Prestige MJM, ticket prices of PLN350-400 (€81-92) are now standard in Poland. “That was unthinkable a few years ago. As a result, projects and concerts are wellsold to this group of recipients,” he said.

discovering and buying them online, according to Katarzyna Suska, managing director of Ticketmaster Poland (formerly Ticketpro.pl). “In Poland, we are going through a ‘mobile revolution.’ We are seeing a steady increase in online and mobile sales, with a fan’s smartphone becoming a ticket to the show for the first time. Though digital tickets are more popular, we can still see that fans are keen to hold on to the memory of a show with consistent sales of our souvenir Collector Tickets.”

According to Matuszewski, outlet sales amount to a single-digit market share and are quickly becoming obsolete. At the moment, it is mainly theatres that still use the classic box office model. “95% of [eBilet] sales are online,” he said, adding that, “the favourite type is print-athome followed by mobile.”

Demand for special tickets is also increasing, especially for larger events. According to Dziubińska, “Golden Circle and Early Entrance tickets are a must with every arena show, and VIP tickets (including meet and greets, and other perks) are getting more popular in Poland.”

PRIMARY TICKETING Three companies jostle for the top position: eBilet, Eventim and Ticketmaster, with Ticketportal coming in fourth. “We have the largest customer reach and the largest live-event customer databases,” eBilet CEO Marcin Matuszewski told ITY. That database is about to get even bigger thanks to a strategic partnership with Allegro, the largest e-commerce platform in Poland, with 22million registered customers, which amounts to more than half the Polish population. “Our goal is to offer customers in Poland a single place where they can get inspired and plan all free-time activities. At the same time, we will offer event promoters new exclusive tools to reach wide audiences.”

According to Matuszewski, the primary ticketing market of Poland is worth around PLN820million (€188m), and grows by 20% annually. This growth is powered by increasing numbers of venues and the country’s growing economy.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Polish fans are quickly moving from buying tickets at outlets to

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Polish people tend to be a bit more selective when it comes to picking up on trends. A breakthrough artist may blow up in most parts of Europe at once, but not in Poland. Dziubińska recalls artists that have sold out arenas in the US that were unable to shift 1,500 tickets at a club show in Poland. “As a result, some agents find Poland financially inadequate for some of their clients,” she said.

According to Pawlicki, “the mentality of the Poles has changed. In today’s world, very few people want to spend their free time at home in front of the TV, as it used to be in the ’80s and ’90s. Nowadays, everyone is looking for an excuse to leave the house. And concerts are just such a great excuse.”

SECONDARY TICKETING Despite the country’s rapid growth, there is still no significant secondary market for tickets in Poland. The fact that the practice is outlawed in the country plays a part in this.

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 55

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

PORTUGAL LANGUAGE PORTUGUESE POPULATION (MILLIONS) 10.8 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 30,500 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 7.6 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 58.4 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.8 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 94 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 96

P

ortugal is vibrant right now. The Algarve and Alentejo regions, in particular, have emerged as festival hotspots, with events including Afro Nation, The BPM, MEO Sudoeste, FMM Sines, Festival F and Festival MED. BPM is not the only international brand that has recognised the country’s potential and invested in taking events there. Brunch In The Park, Tomorrowland Unite and Villa Mix, are other examples.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketline, Blueticket and BOL still control most of the Portuguese market. A relatively new entrant is UK-based, white-label platform Festicket, which offers a travel-package approach.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES While online has emerged as an important sales channel for all ticketing agencies, the main three players still rely on physical points of sale, such as FNAC or Worten, where roughly half of customers still prefer to buy tickets. Ticketline has over 540 retail outlets, works with 460 venues and call centres, and has a strong online presence. It also

runs the Ticketline magazine and website.

Blueticket arose from the ticket-handling spin-off from Arena Atlântico in Lisbon, and says it sells over 3million tickets for around 350 events a year, and manages the ticketing for over 220 venues.

Frederico Camara, commercial director for the region at Festicket, said the number of people still buying their tickets in physical stores was dropping year-on-year.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The Portuguese are still comparatively slow when it comes to the adoption of credit-cards and online payments, most people still use Multibanco when purchasing tickets online, Portugal’s banking network.

Though cashless solutions are still a rarity at Portuguese festivals, local players expect the technology to gain traction in 2020.

TAXES & CHARGES The country slashed its concert VAT to 6% on the Portuguese mainland, 5% in Madeira and 4% in the Azores, last November, a move that was welcomed by the entire live entertainment and cultural sector.

ROMANIA LANGUAGE ROMANIAN POPULATION (MILLIONS) 21.5 CURRENCY LEU GDP/CAPITA (US$) 24,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 12.9 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 47.7 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 46

C

odruța Vulcu, one of Romania’s most successful promoters, and director of the country’s promoters’ association AROC, said at last year’s East European Music Conference that Romania was still in its infancy as a live entertainment destination.

While it may seem like a tiny market compared to surrounding countries like Serbia, Hungary and Poland, the quality of its live events has been constantly improving over the past few years.

A lack of venues, and roads connecting them, are still the main challenges promoters face in the region, according to Guido Janssens, director of Romanian promoter Emagic.

PRIMARY TICKETING There are four major companies in the market. Bilet.ro is the largest by volume, while other significant operators are Bilete.ro, Myticket.ro and white-label Livetickets.ro.

CTS Eventim has a strong presence, particularly with regard to international tours. According to Janssens, there are also “a number of new, local and more flexible ticketing sites, mainly Labilet.ro. It is gaining market share fast. This development made Emagic decide to renounce its one-ticketing-site-only policy, which means we’re no longer selling our tickets exclusively via Eventim.”

56 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES According to Ionut Buha, managing director of Eventim Romania, “the main channels for selling tickets are online [print-at-home] and mobile. Box office and at-the-door are decreasing, while social media hasn’t picked up traction yet.”

The most popular music genre is pop/rock. Dance/electronic music is also prominent but, according to Buha, 90% of the sales in this genre are generated at two annual events: Untold and Neversea festivals.

Eventim sells about 55-60% of all tickets for concerts by international acts.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Local administrations organise a lot of free events, where they not only book Romanian artists but international stars as well. A recent example includes Bucharest City Hall bringing over Rod Stewart for a free-entrance event. “With this in mind, people aren’t that keen to pay for a concert ticket,” Buha explained.

What is more, the aforementioned lack of event venues means that people haven’t developed a culture of going to events yet, especially in the smaller cities.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

RUSSIA LANGUAGES RUSSIAN, TATAR POPULATION (MILLIONS) 142.3 CURRENCY RUBLE GDP/CAPITA (US$) 27,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 108.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 57.5 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.5 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 44.7 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 418 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 473

these days, and the contribution of box offices is dwindling. Kassir, which also sells air and train tickets, is working hard to drive the mobile side of the market, with particular attention to cinema tickets.

VALUE OF MARKET Afisha Picnic festival saw performances from The Cure, Royal Blood and Pusha T this year.

R

elationships between Russia and the West have not been at their most harmonious for the past few years, and consequently, international traffic is thinner than it once was. But Russia has plenty of homemade music, a summer full of festivals and loads of theatre, and its Internet, mobile and banking giants are busily absorbing the ticketing business as another value-adding consumer attraction.

PRIMARY TICKETING A ticketing operation has become a must-have for Russian conglomerates in the past year or two. Russian bank Tinkoff bought a 20% stake in concert ticketing market leader Kassir.ru in summer 2018, and earlier in the year, mobile giant MTS picked up leading ticketers Ticketland and Ponominalu.

Russian Internet titan Yandex has also made a splash in the ticketing world. It already claimed an estimated 5-10% of the e-ticketing market when it roughly doubled its share in June with the acquisition of e-ticketing system TicketSteam, which in 2018, sold more than 2.5million e-tickets, worth RUB3.5billion (€49m).

And earlier in the month, Yandex’s main rival Mail.Ru Group made an investment of unspecified size in ticketing aggregator TIWO’s Moscowbased Ticketing Platform.

The specific business objectives of all these conglomerates vary but all are keen to use ticketing to enhance their status as generalised online destinations for consumers.

“It is mainly about creating ecosystems and marketplaces,” says Ticketland CEO Vitaly Vinogradov. “Ticketing companies are just one aspect of the platforms offered by major players. The idea is that anything you want, you can buy from their app.”

Yandex, Russia’s equivalent of Google, is also the country’s equivalent of Uber, Amazon, Spotify and Netflix, thanks to its streaming, e-commerce and ride-hailing services. Its rapid growth as a ticketing player has left a mark on most of its rivals, particularly as the ticketing market is currently relatively static year-on-year.

But overall, live entertainment in Russia is reckoned to have plenty of growth ahead in the long-term, and even in the medium-term it is slated to grow by 7.2% a year, compared to a global average of 4.2% [source: PwC].

Other operators in Russia’s largely domestically owned ticketing sector include RedKassa, smart ticketing platform Tickets Cloud, and Eventim’s Partner. Eventim this year handled Universiade 2019, the student and youth winter games in Krasnoyarsk, which was one of the most complex sports projects in Russia, on a par with the FIFA World Cup.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES The large majority of sales – perhaps 80% – take place online

Estimates of the size of the ticket market in Russia range from R45bn (€630m) to R60bn (€840m) per year [source: PwC].

SECONDARY TICKETING Viagogo and StubHub sell tickets to Russian consumers via the Internet, and classified sites such as Avito.ru and Yoola are also popular.

“The total volume of the secondary market in Russia is estimated at about 15% of the primary one and is highly dependent on major events, such as the recent Fifa World Cup,” says Eventim Russia managing director Elena Glukhovskaya. “From a legislative point of view, ticketing operators and promoters are obliged to accept tickets for return. We do not expect major changes in the legal regulation.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Many European tours are drawing the line at the Russian border these days, but this summer’s Moscow festivals feature star turns from The Cure, Royal Blood and Pusha T (Afisha Picnic), Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, Thirty Seconds To Mars, MØ (Park Live), and The Good, The Bad & The Queen (Bol). When it comes, stadium rock always sells well.

Some estimates put international shows at as high as 40% of the total offering in cities like Moscow, and due to their higher ticket prices they bring in up to 60% of profit. In the regions, domestic shows are closer to 80%, according to Eventim estimates.

Russia has no difficulty creating its own entertainment, from pop stars such as Jah Khalib and Nyusha to rockers including Animatsiya, Kalinov Most and Kipelov. Hip-hop is having a thin time, having come under fire from Vladimir Putin for its poor moral character. Many small gigs – not only hip-hop ones – were shut down at short notice in late 2018, as part of a crackdown on potentially subversive youth music, which affected artists including Siberian rapper Husky and teen band Frendzona.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The main factors affecting ticket sales in Russia are economic instability and relatively low income levels, and these have particular knock-on effects. “The average frequency of ticket-buying for one Russian customer is 2.1 per year, mainly due to relatively inexpensive tickets to repertory theatres,” says Glukhovskaya. “Also, it is mainly big cities, particularly Moscow and St. Petersburg, that receive big events and shows. In those cities, there is a lot of uncertainty about the future, so people never buy tickets in advance in order not to lose money if plans are changed. Due to this, Russia is a late-buying market.”

TAXES & CHARGES VAT rose from 18% to 20% from the beginning of 2019. Service charges typically vary between 5% and 10%. In March, Ticketland, the leader in the theatre sector, abolished its 10% service charge in a bid to woo customers from the services of promoters and venues. “That is a lot because it is 40% of our revenue, but while this year, for sure, we will lose [revenue], in the long run it will lead to growth,” says Vinogradov.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

SINGAPORE LANGUAGES MANDARIN, ENGLISH, MALAY POPULATION (MILLIONS) 6 CURRENCY SINGAPOREAN DOLLAR GDP/CAPITA (US$) 94,100 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 4.7 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 74.9 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 16.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 50.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 46 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 54

Lushington Entertainments promoted the Jason Mraz concert at The Star Theatre.

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ingapore has spent this year in an economic slump amid falling exports that have led to the city-state’s slowest growth in a decade.

It can probably afford a blip – Singapore has the world’s seventhhighest GDP per capita – but consumer spending has weakened accordingly, and purse strings are inevitably a little bit tighter in one of the world’s more prosperous little places.

PRIMARY TICKETING The ticketing incumbent in Singapore has for many years been SISTIC, which sells a broad range of tickets from music to sport. Sports Hub Tix sells events at the Singapore Sports Hub, which includes the Singapore Indoor Stadium, National Stadium and OCBC Arena. APACTix launched in 2014 as a general entertainment ticketing site and remains in the mix, as does Ticketek Singapore.

A potential new player has also arrived in the form of multiservice platform Grab, which launched in 2012 as a ride-sharing service but now extends to hotels, food deliveries, public transport and cinema ticketing, having added BookMyShow to its service in June. Events and other entertainment may follow.

“Singapore is a growing market for live entertainment, and this has resulted in rather intense competition in the ticketing industry,” says SISTIC CEO Joe Ow. “Competition is good because it offers choices to the market, but to us, the competition is nothing new. We remain confident in our experience and track record of providing ticketing services here and around the region for more than 20 years. Technology has brought about rapid changes in consumer behaviour and as an organisation, we are adapting to these shifts.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES E-commerce is highly popular in Singapore, though mobile purchasing has been relatively slow to catch up with desktop. It is doing so now, driven by smartphone-toting young Singaporeans, and m-tickets are available through SISTIC’s mobile app. “We have noticed a shifting trend in customers buying tickets online and opting for e-tickets, instead of purchasing tickets at physical counters and collecting printed tickets,” says Ow. In addition to its online portals, the company operates a telephone hotline and a retail network. It shuttered more than a quarter of its authorised agent counters in December 2018, cutting the numbers from 39 to 28, in response to a shift towards online purchasing.

58 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Technology is pushing into the market in other ways, too, Ow adds.

“While RFID technology is not new, it is being adopted by more companies each year and it seems to be gaining traction among event organisers with its potential,” he says.

VALUE OF MARKET There were 3,186 ticketed music, theatre and dance events in 2017, according to Singapore’s Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth – the lowest since 2013 – though tickets sold were up on the previous year, to 1,489,685, with a value of S$87.7million (€57.4m).

SECONDARY TICKETING Scalping is illegal in Singapore, and tickets found on the black market can be voided. The problem is growing in severity and is obviously mainly evident when tickets are in high demand. Viagogo, StubHub and Carousell are all active.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Singapore is a major entertainment hub for Southeast Asia, and its pop offering draws from all over the world. Singapore has a surprisingly strong rock, punk and metal scene of its own, but inevitably much of the 5.6m-strong city’s entertainment is passing though.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Singapore’s SportsHub has struggled to win local hearts since it opened in 2014, having failed in the eyes of many locals to bring sufficient world-class events. Executives have come and gone, but the current calendar of forthcoming shows is a fairly busy one, including U2, Jay Chou and Westlife at the National Stadium, and Cantopop icon Andy Lau, Shawn Mendes, Backstreet Boys and K-pop bands Nu’Est and NCT 127, at the Indoor Stadium.

TAXES & CHARGES Ticketers collect a booking fee of between S$1 (€0.64) and S$4 (€2.57), depending on the price of the ticket, plus delivery and m-ticket charges where applicable.

Concert promoters are subsidised by the Singaporean government because of music’s value to tourism, in the form of cash sponsorships, free or discounted venue rental or tax breaks to offset ticket prices.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

SLOVAKIA LANGUAGE SLOVAK POPULATION (MILLIONS) 5.4 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 33,000 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 4.4 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 57 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.5 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 45.4

Charlotte Gainsbourg at Pohoda Festival, which has an in-house ticketing system.

“Our market is saturated with the current offer,” comments Matwe Kaščák, of the country’s biggest summer event, Pohoda Festival. “Even smaller venues can find a ticketing partner while big players get to sell tickets at quite fair and acceptable offers. We’re not a big country so it’s quite easy to cover it with just a few companies.” He adds, “Competition is always welcome, though – I’m especially curious about the impact of GoOut in Slovakia. From what I’ve seen, their offer is quite solid.”

Kaščák reports that Pohoda has an in-house ticketing system, which keeps all administration, transactions, reports and communication within the festival’s custom-built, e-shop environment. However, for the sake of security and customer convenience, it also uses GoTicket’s code/e-ticket API generator, Superfaktura.sk’s API for automated invoices, and Global Payments WebPay terminal for processing payments. “The flow works great: we tried it successfully at sold-out Pohoda 2019 and it’s a clever crossover, which gives us both stability and independence,” says Kaščák.

Another service that is growing in popularity is Tootoot.fm, which is used in clubs and independent theatres as an alternative way of selling tickets. Tootoot has its own free smartphone reader app, which makes it convenient for gate staff and smaller audiences. However, that market could soon be crowded if GoOut’s prospective Slovak launch comes to fruition.

SECONDARY TICKETING

D

espite its relatively small size, Slovakia’s ticketing market is fairly mature, with the needs of event organisers at all levels catered for by various operators, both homegrown and from neighbouring territories.

The popularity of live entertainment is underlined by the occasional activity of Viagogo, however. And despite strong demand, Slovakia definitely misses out on the majority of A-list tours, with the likes of the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary normally securing dates for their arena and stadium venues.

PRIMARY TICKETING With more than 1,800 points of sale, Ticketportal is the no. 1 ticketer in Slovakia, while Ticketpro, now owned by Ticketmaster, retains a small market share, and Eventim continues to circle, although it has not, as yet, invested in operations in any significant way.

The Ticketportal.sk platform is one of Slovakia’s most popular discovery sites for live events. The company’s sales systems are installed in theatres, sports halls, cinemas and museums throughout the country, while it also offers a platform called GoTicket that local promoters can use to facilitate print-at-home ticket sales to customers.

Other players include TicketStream and Predpredaj.sk, a ticketing company founded by Slovak search engine Zoznam, which is owned by T-Mobile. In addition to using Zoznam’s power as a media partner to run successful sales campaigns, Predpredaj also sells tickets in T-Mobile stores. Hungarian operator Interticket also had a presence, but at ITY’s press time their website had no events on-sale in Slovakia and club promoters who had previously used their services appear to have migrated to other systems.

Looking ahead, GoOut, which is popular with event organisers in the Czech Republic, apparently has plans to enter the Slovak market, in a move that could reshape the mid-level of the local ticketing business.

Online retail and auction sites, such as Bazos.sk and Bazar.sk, sometimes offer ticket resales, but these are minimal and there are no local secondary operations in Slovakia. Viagogo’s aggressive marketing for shows and festivals began to appear in 2018, but there are signs this could be on the wane.

“Viagogo became a factor here, but hopefully Google’s ban on their ads will take this issue back to zero,” says Kaščák, who reports that Pohoda had less Viagogo-related issues in 2019 compared to the previous year. “We registered a possible bot activity pattern within our shop but from our records it seems there was no successful bot sales through our e-shop.” Nonetheless, he reports, “We have had problems at [some] concerts [we have promoted], where people turned up with fake tickets bought through Viagogo and [had to be] denied entry.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Historically, people have bought event tickets at the last minute, but with better acts and more professional events now becoming the norm, buying tickets in advance for festivals and big-name acts is becoming more common.

Young people are becoming used to purchasing tickets online for events but physical stores, post offices and ticketing kiosks are still paramount for live music promoters.

The local market is predominantly card-based but Apple Pay made its debut in Slovakia recently, and young people, in particular, are quickly becoming accustomed to buying goods and services online.

However, Kaščák notes that Slovak fans like their “old-school paper tickets” and it is common for people to print e-tickets, even after they have been told that they can be read from phone screens directly.

TAXES & CHARGES Booking fees in Slovakia are typically between 6-10%.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA LANGUAGES ZULU, XHOSA, AFRIKAANS, ENGLISH, SOTHO POPULATION (MILLIONS) 55.3 CURRENCY RAND GDP/CAPITA (US$) 13,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 29.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 28.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 17.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 84 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 113

S

outh Africa is the key international touring stop on the African continent, though numerous nations are pushing to join it, including Morocco, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and others.

Its ticketing business is competitive and long established – Shoprite’s market-leader Computicket, launched in 1971, was the world’s first online ticketing platform.

PRIMARY TICKETING A long-running and notorious episode came to a conclusion in January 2019 when Computicket was fined ZAR20million (€1.2m)

by South Africa’s Competition Commission for abusing its market dominance between 2005 and 2010. After a nine-year investigation, the Commission judged that Computicket, which during that period enjoyed a market share of up to 95%, had used long-term exclusive agreements with event organisers to block new entrants from the market. The ticketer has announced its intention to appeal the finding.

In the meantime, the market rumbles on. Computicket sells not only concert, comedy, sport and cinema tickets but flights and bus tickets, too, and deploys a powerful network of online and physical outlets.

Other players include the sports-focused TicketPro, iTickets and Webtickets, as well as event technology start-ups such as Plankton and Quicket, which have found their own niches in smaller events and festivals.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Online booking, pioneered by Computicket as one of the earliest online ticketing platforms in the world, has boomed in South Africa over recent years, and is now available for practically all events. But the market still has an unusual number of older cash buyers – 32% of the nation’s adults don’t have a bank account – and paper tickets live on.

Several mobile payment solutions have abandoned the effort in South Africa in recent years, despite massive uptake elsewhere on the African continent. Computicket owner Shoprite is the latest to try, launching a mobile money service last year to its 35m daily customers.

VALUE OF MARKET Total South African live music revenues, including sponsorship, stood at ZAR1.3billion (€82m) in 2017, of which almost ZAR1bn (€63m) came directly from ticket sales. That’s according to PwC, which expects the total to be ZAR1.9bn (€120m) by 2022, including ZAR1.5bn (€95m) in ticket sales.

SECONDARY TICKETING Ticket touting is not expressly prohibited by law, though it is often forbidden in the terms and conditions of ticketers, and misleading practices are covered in the country’s Consumer Protection Act. Viagogo is present in South Africa, of course, along with local e-ticket reseller TicketPony, which limits resale prices to 110% of the original ticket price.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Ed Sheeran broke attendance records with his four March shows, selling 230,000 tickets for concerts at the Cape Town Stadium and Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium. In South Africa, genres such as hip-hop, house and the Durban-derived gqom are all enjoying a moment.

Homegrown stars include singing duo Mafikizolo and Durban rapper Nasty C.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Event technology start-up Quicket partnered with cashless festival Rocking the Daisies.

60 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

The development of the wider African music business will certainly make South Africa more viable and less remote, and the continent seems primed in a way it hasn’t before. Universal Music has targeted Africa for streaming growth and has offices in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, but it is also pushing touring infrastructure and is behind 11 live music venues in West African countries including Senegal, Cameroon and Ivory Coast.

South Africa appears to be a likely base for continental infrastructure to develop from. For example, although Computicket operates only in its home country, its parent Shoprite has stores in 14 other African countries.

The fast-growing Quicket, meanwhile, openly aims to become the first pan-African ticketing company, operating already in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia, with Nigeria on the horizon.

“East Africa is really warming to Quicket,” says co-founder James Tagg. “In these countries, we have local currency processing and disbursement but we also accept payment using mobile money and M-Pesa.”

TAXES & CHARGES VAT of 15% is applied to ticket sales in South Africa, and fees can vary from 6% to as much as 15%, depending on the provider.

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

SPAIN LANGUAGE SPANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 48.3 CURRENCY EURO GDP/CAPITA (US$) 38,400 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 39.1 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 65.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 9.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 44.9 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 249 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 275

2

018 saw the Spanish live music industry definitively shake off the difficult years of the early 2010s, posting a record annual income of €333.9million, in what was its fifth consecutive year-on-year rise.

This total was more than double the €158m the industry earned in 2013, when Spain was deep in recession and the live industry was suffering from a hike in the VAT on “cultural goods” to 21%, a decision reversed in 2017.

The new 10% rate on cultural goods was one of the many reasons for the boom in live music in Spain, to which we might add tourism and Spain’s general economic upturn. The Spanish economy grew 2.6% in 2018 and is projected to increase by 2.2% in 2019, 1.9% in 2020 and 1.7% in 2021.

Local live promoter association APM (La Asociación de Promotores Musicales) called 2018 an “exceptional year,” with the boom centred on July and October, when tours by the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden visited Spain.

APM president Albert Salmerón says that early figures suggest that 2019 could be as strong as – or even better – than 2018. “We are seeing national artists like Manuel Carrasco and Alejandro Sanz filling stadiums all over the country, and the first festivals are already reporting record figures. First impressions are really good.”

Antonio Valero, head of music at StubHub International, explains that his company has seen “an increasingly captive demand in Spain for global live shows, with high levels of tourism helping to boost attendances”.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster is Spain’s biggest primary ticketing company, according to local promoters, followed by Ticketea (which was bought

by Eventbrite in April 2018) and Entradas.com (bought by Eventim in 2014). Department store chain El Corte Inglés is also important.

B2B digital platforms such as Onebox and Wegow that allow promoters to sell tickets online, are also growing in popularity. In June 2018, Wegow announced a deal with carrier billing specialist Telecoming that would allow customers to buy tickets via their mobile phone accounts. Koobin is also there, and Tiqueteo.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Some 98% of the Spanish public buys tickets online, according to Salmerón. Of these, 57% do so via their computer and 38% through their phone. This rapid move online – in 2015, APM reported that 51.4% of all live music tickets in Spain were bought from the venue’s box office – reflects a growing acceptance of online retail in Spain, where Amazon only launched in 2011.

Ticketmaster Spain director general, Eugeni Calsamiglia, says that self-service ticketing is increasing in popularity among event organisers, especially those with events in fixed venues. “Our launch of Universe, the self-service ticketing platform, in Spain, has been a great development for us in this space to cater to these growing needs,” he adds.

Spanish acts such as Manuel Carrasco are contributing to the strong performance of the live music market in 2019.

Sectorial de Cultura said that it would have to address the issue but, according to Salmerón, “for now, it has only been an act for the gallery.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The rise of Latin music around the world has been seen with great interest in Spain, with Rosalía becoming the first Spanish artist in years to make waves in the Anglophone world. As might be expected, Latin American music is hugely popular in Spain.

“On StubHub, we see that, based on tickets sold, around 80% of the top events are international and around 20% are national events,” says Valero. “As we move on to smaller acts, that percentage shifts to 80% national and 20% international. This shows that despite the dominance of international mainstream music, there is still a large appetite for smaller acts covering very different musical niches.”

EDM and reggae also remain hugely popular in Spain, their popularity evident in the success of the Medusa Sunbeach and Rototom Sunsplash festivals. The former attracted 300,000 attendees in 2018; the latter welcomed 208,000.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS The Barcelona duo of Primavera Sound and Sónar probably remain the best known Spanish festivals internationally, with their reputations allowing them to expand internationally.

At home, Madrid’s Mad Cool event made considerable headway in 2018. It attracted 240,000 attendees last year, more than Primavera (220,000) and Sónar (126,000), and behind only Arenal Sound and Medusa Sunbeach festivals (300,000 apiece).

“In Spain, music festivals have been growing significantly in the last few years,” says Ticketmaster’s Calsamiglia, “particularly for tourists – who can exceed 50% of festival attendees. Alongside this, electronic music is experiencing increased popularity.

“Finally, a new type of genre is emerging with great strength – e-sports. We are seeing more of these types of event being promoted in Spain, in bigger and bigger venues, with tickets selling out phenomenally fast. Everything indicates that it will be one of the new genres of reference in the world of entertainment in the coming years.”

SECONDARY TICKETING Local sources say that Viagogo and Stubhub (which has some primary ticketing relationships, too) are the most popular secondary ticketing sites in Spain, after Ticketmaster shuttered Seatwave, its secondary ticketing operation.

As in many parts of the world, secondary ticketing remains a controversial subject. APM is fervently opposed, for example, and has been taking the fight to the Spanish government. In October, the Conferencia

TAXES & CHARGES Local collecting society SGAE takes 8.5% of revenues and there is a 10% IVA rate on “cultural goods” including tickets. While this is down from the previous rate of 21%, the live music business continues to call on the Spanish government to reduce this rate further.

In May 2019, SGAE was temporarily expelled from collecting societies body CISAC, following controversy around TV performance royalties.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

SWEDEN LANGUAGE SWEDISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 10 CURRENCY KRONA GDP/CAPITA (US$) 51,500 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 9.0 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 86.3 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 39.4 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 393 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 470

S

candinavia’s number-one market motors along in muscular fashion. A major pop factory, thanks to a hive of songwriting and production teams and a star-making tradition that stretches from ABBA to Robyn, Sweden is a busy music spot, and no serious corporate is without a presence in its competitive ticketing battleground.

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster Sweden is the leader in the Swedish market, though increasingly it has competition. AEG’s AXS.com handles the company’s busy Stockholm Live venues – Ericsson Globe, Tele2 Arena, Friends Arena, Hovet and Annexet. The former Venuepoint group, now fully under Eventim control, has rebranded itself as Eventim Scandinavia and its Biljettforum platform as Eventim.se.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Mobile is up in Sweden, as desktop computer-use begins to dwindle a little – at least where ticket sales are concerned. “Desktop traffic is down, with mobile overtaking on a big scale,” says Kristian Seljeset, managing director of Ticketmaster Norway and Sweden. “The same applies for mobile payment methods – Swish, for example, is now

very popular with Swedish fans.”

Sweden is increasingly cashless, and microchips, too, are making an impression. Technology in general, in fact, is opening up new possibilities at unprecedented speed.

“We continue to see increasing digital sophistication in the industry and increased demand for digital support to track and optimise the results of online marketing campaigns and social media,” says Eventim Scandinavia CEO Jens B. Arnesen.

At Ticketmaster, Seljeset says AI-driven analytics are becoming an increasingly potent tool. “In addition to traditional channels, such as email and social, our predictive intelligence technology is driving better results than ever before,” he says. “Being able to understand every fan’s preferences – the artists they like, the genres they prefer, the towns and venues they are interested in – allows us to serve fans better and sell more tickets for our clients.”

VALUE OF MARKET Concert revenue accounted for SEK6billion (€570million) or 56% of total Swedish music industry revenue in 2017, up from 55% and SEK5.5bn the year before [source: Musiksverige].

SECONDARY TICKETING The Ericsson Globe is a key music destination in the Nordics.

Sweden’s high demand for tickets meets the necessary conditions for a secondary market, and accordingly it has one, powered mainly by Viagogo. Arnesen laments the impact on promoters and fans and says Eventim’s Fansale resale platform is on its way soon. AXS has already introduced AXS Marketplace.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Domestic artists are famous for their international success, given that Sweden, with its 9.9m-strong population, is not a vast market, even if it is a bustling one. Local acts are more prone to touring but it’s a rare major tour that skips Scandinavia, and if there is only one regional date, it will usually be in Stockholm.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Like most markets, Sweden has its own particular rhythms and cycles. “Most Scandinavians get their salary at the end of each month, so most promoters want to time on-sale launches and marketing campaigns with paydays,” says Arnesen. “July is a great month for outdoor concerts and festivals, due to the nice climate and long summer nights, but we don’t see many new ticket launches in July, due to the vacations. So the large on-sales for festivals are after the holidays and during the fall.”

Sweden’s major upset in recent years was the cancellation, in 2018, of its biggest festival, FKP Scorpio’s Bråvalla, after a rash of sexual assaults at what proved to be its final edition in 2017.

Sweden is a hip market that values novelty, so it welcomed a first Stockholm Lollapalooza in June. It also has some dependably popular festival brands, including Sweden Rock and Summerburst.

TAXES & CHARGES Concerts fall into Sweden’s lowest tax band at 6%. Ticketing agents’ service fees go up to about 8%, though they can be lower, and tend to be included in the advertised ticket price.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

SWITZERLAND LANGUAGES GERMAN, FRENCH, ITALIAN, ROMANSH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 8.3 CURRENCY FRANC GDP/CAPITA (US$) 62,100 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 7.3 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 72.8 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 10.7 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 42.9 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 370 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 384

© JULIUS HATT

OpenAir St Gallen is one of the most important of Switzerland’s many festivals.

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s in the rest of the world, market consolidation is well underway in Switzerland. Live Nation bought promoter Mainland in late 2018, and DEAG acquired Live Music Production LMP S.A. and Live Music Entertainment S.A. this summer.

The ticketing sector has yet to experience any major shake-ups, but Frank Schwegler, CCO of the country’s number-two ticketing agency Starticket, expects that to change soon, in particular in light of quite a few start-ups entering the game with their own innovative ticketing solutions.

“But for now,” said Schwegler, “competition is good for business.”

“Once consolidation in the ticketing market gathers momentum,” said Transaction Consulting’s Marcus Garbe, “there will be room for real challengers, like [predominantly B2B platform] Reservix demonstrated successfully in Germany.”

small- and medium-sized events is where he still sees “a lot of potential.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Most Swiss event-goers buy their tickets online and via mobile device, between 80% and 96%, depending on which ticket agency you ask. Baumgartner said that 2019 saw a shift from print-at-home to mobile, with the latter becoming the favourite ticket format.

Andreas Angehrn, CEO of Ticketcorner, observes a slight decline in sales for international acts in favour of local artists who have started to fill up big venues just as quickly as some international stars.

Pop, rock and urban are still the most-loved genres when it comes to ticket-selling potential. However, the Swiss are obsessed with sport, which is why tickets to matches and tournaments make up an important part of every ticketing agency’s portfolio.

PRIMARY TICKETING CTS Eventim, which operates as Ticketcorner in Switzerland, is the market leader, followed by Starticket. The two companies attempted a mega merger in 2016 that was denied by the Swiss authorities in 2017. A move that “was welcomed by most of the promoters in Switzerland,” according to Schwegler. Starticket is owned by leading media company Tamedia, which provides a big sales boost through online native advertising.

The third largest is Ticketmaster, which is picking up pace. The company’s Live Nation affiliation and proven track record in dealing with major events have led to many successful partnerships. Most recently, Ticketmaster has been scoring some major wins in the sporting arena, signing the Swiss Ice Hockey Association, Swiss Basketball Association, the Spengler Cup Davos, the second biggest indoor tournament in Switzerland, and many more. “Stadium shows such as Metallica and Bon Jovi, alongside big festivals like Open Air Frauenfeld, have been big triumphs for us,” says Ticketmaster Switzerland CEO George Egloff.

There are some who say the Swiss market is oversaturated with ticket sellers, in particular in the high-priced events tier. One of them is Reto Baumgartner of Eventfrog, a DIY ticketing service. The market segment of

SECONDARY TICKETING The practice of secondary ticketing is widely scoffed at by Swiss live entertainment professionals. Viagogo and Alltickets are the two main players, but Starticket and Eventim’s Ticketcorner are both working with consumer protection agencies to prevent the practice. Last spring, CTS Eventim launched its fan-to-fan, face-value resale platform Fansale.ch.

Aside from that, personalised tickets for big events seems to be a solution most agencies are comfortable with. Checking the name of every entrant obviously slows down the process, but, according to Schwegler, “customers are getting more and more used to it, which might increase efficiency over time. It is still the only way that safely prevents overpriced tickets being sold on the secondary market.”

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Switzerland is a country in which four main languages are widely spoken. What this means, according to Angehrn, is that ticketing agencies wanting to market to a nation-wide audience need to provide all services, including customer service, in German, French, Italian and English.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

TURKEY LANGUAGES TURKISH, KURDISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 81.2 CURRENCY LIRA GDP/CAPITA (US$) 27,000 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 46.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 51.8 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 16.0 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 43.2 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 55 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 63

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urkey is still struggling under political and economic turmoil, which makes it hard to grow a business. The country’s leading promoter Pozitif underwent major corporate restructure and lost its two remaining co-founders in October. Still, senior booker Elif Cemal assured ITY that the company was navigating the turbulent political and economic climate in Turkey better than many, and was downsizing its operations to lay a solid foundation for Pozitif’s future.

According to Charmenko’s Su Topcu, the main challenge every promoter in Turkey currently faces is the exchange rate. “It is difficult to make the artist fees work, due to the lira’s low value and what punters are willing to pay for a ticket. Sponsorships are also much more difficult to get, as related budgets and possible sponsors have been significantly cut down,” she explained, adding that there were “very few promoters in Turkey for international artists left standing; in that sense there are opportunities for those that can survive during this extended downturn.”

PRIMARY TICKETING Ticketmaster is still the market leader in Turkey, where it operates as Biletix. The one company that seemed well placed to challenge the

number-one was Mobilet, which pursued an online-only, social-media heavy approach but eventually folded.

The local competition includes Biletinial, Biletino and TixBox, but they aren’t considered competitors, according to Topcu at Charmenko, Turkey’s biggest promoter.

Ticketmaster general manager Kemal Erdine is optimistic, despite the economic status quo. “I’m happy to say we’ve had multiple new venues open in Istanbul and around Turkey, so we expect to see an increase in the number of events taking place,” he tells ITY, adding that “musicals and other big-scale productions are becoming increasingly popular with Turkish fans, which has resulted in more of these being booked as well.”

TAXES & CHARGES The main concert and festival activity used to be limited to the country’s capital Istanbul. “In the last couple of years, promoters have begun to hold festivals all over Turkey,” Erdine explained, adding that, “e-sports is gaining momentum. Big gaming events are organised around Turkey, creating an alternative to music and art events, for young people especially.”

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES LANGUAGES ARABIC, ENGLISH, PERSIAN, HINDI, URDU POPULATION (MILLIONS) 9.4 CURRENCY DIRHAM GDP/CAPITA (US$) 68,600 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 5.4 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 81.0 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 7.6 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 70

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he UAE hasn’t been short of live entertainment ambition over the years, but the historical facts of the market – its finite pool of concert-going expats, a shortage of venues in Dubai – have presented stiff challenges. But Dubai’s venue problem, at least, has been fixed lately, with the arrival of AEG Ogden’s 17,000-cap Coca-Cola Arena, to add to the Dubai Opera, which launched in 2016. Live Nation Middle East has latterly been pushing hard to grow the market, too, alongside long-serving local promoters such as Done Events and Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Flash Entertainment.

In Abu Dhabi, the Flash-supervised, 18,000-cap, indoor Yas Arena, now under construction, will bring summer possibilities to a market that specialises in the big occasion, from the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and football’s Asian Cup to stadium-filling appearances by Coldplay, the Rolling Stones and, most recently, the Pope.

PRIMARY TICKETING In Dubai, where most of the UAE’s entertainment takes place, the main ticketing platform is local event guide Platinumlist, while Virgin Megastore, Indian giant BookMyShow and Ticketmaster also compete.

Ticketmaster works with Flash in Abu Dhabi and handled the FIFA Club World Cup, among other events.

BookMyShow this summer beefed up its Middle Eastern operation with the announcement of a five-year deal as the preferred ticketing platform of the new Coca-Cola Arena. The deal isn’t exclusive – Platinumlist and Ticketmaster were also on board at the time of writing – but BookMyShow will be providing and promoting selected content at the venue.

After a sluggish 2018 in Dubai, this year has seen an uptick fuelled by new-arena excitement, according to Vassiliy Anatoli, managing director of Platinumlist, which single-handedly sold out the Coca-Cola Arena’s first concert – Maroon 5 – in two days.

“The market is definitely growing,” he says. “But it is a very competitive market for organisers – there is no easy money here. Only a few organisers who know the market well end up making a profit, as it is a relatively small market and the public is spoilt for choice.”

India’s BookMyShow is the preferred ticketer for the recently-opened Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai, although Platinumlist and Ticketmaster are also on board.

Darren Hepworth. “We’re working extremely hard with the local entertainment sector and are delighted to be offering our global ‘Verified Fan’ technology to our UAE partners.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES Local artists find relatively few opportunities in the UAE, where Western and sometimes Far Eastern entertainment tends to be the norm. Live Nation VP Middle East/South Asia Zaed Maqbool has spoken of a desire to expand the cultural variety of touring acts, and to build a regional circuit that could also encompass India and Lebanon.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES All channels are open in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, from digital tickets to bricks-and-mortar outlets, which include convenience stores, money-transfer chains (Platinumlist) and Virgin Megastore’s dozen points of sale, most of them in Dubai’s malls, with a branch each in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. There is no postal system, so physical sales remain strong, though mobile is also growing steadily.

VALUE OF MARKET The live market in Dubai is estimated by Platinumlist to be about $140million (€123m). No figures are available for the market in Abu Dhabi.

SECONDARY TICKETING Scalping is illegal in the Emirates, but at the time of writing Viagogo was posting high prices for everything from UFC fights to Eminem in Abu Dhabi, to self-help guru Tony Robbins at the Coca-Cola Arena. “The unregulated secondary ticketing market has finally hit the UAE market like a whirlwind, and it’s a constant issue for organisers of the biggest events,” says Ticketmaster Middle East vice president

CULTURAL ANALYSIS Ticketers are keeping a sharp eye on developments elsewhere in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, where a major state-backed entertainment push aims to keep Saudi nationals from spending their money overseas.

“Saudi is a vacuum in the events industry that is being quickly filled up, thanks to many positive reforms by the government,” says Anatoli, who adds that new Saudi business is responsible for 185% growth in Platinumlist’s revenues. “The pace seems to only increase,” he adds.

Ticketmaster’s Hepworth agrees. “The greatest opportunities are to be found regionally with the explosion of live entertainment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ticketmaster is working closely with the government authorities in building a sustainable industry that attracts the biggest events while providing the highest levels of fan experience.”

TAXES & CHARGES A 10% ticket tax applies in Dubai, and 5% VAT is payable across the UAE. Charges vary between 5% and 15% on tickets sold.

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES

UNITED KINGDOM LANGUAGE ENGLISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 65.6 CURRENCY POUND STERLING GDP/CAPITA (US$) 44,300 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 61.1 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 73.6 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 11.9 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 40.6 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 1,501 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 1,512

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© DAVID ILIFF

he UK’s live business has been booming at the top for years but has paid the price with a rampant secondary ticketing sector, which has gradually been brought to heel of late. There are other challenges too: the market is perhaps a little less mighty than it was two or three years ago; a saturated festival season got off to a slightly slow start in 2019 – Glastonbury and one or two others excepted; and a nodeal Brexit remained an ominous, sentiment-damping possibility at the time of writing.

Nonetheless, the international touring business, of which London is incontrovertibly one of the major hubs, continues to thrive, and the market’s big boys consistently break their own records.

“Ticketing has received a vast amount of attention over the last 12 months,” says Ticketmaster UK managing director Andrew Parsons. “I think that is down to 2018 being one of the busiest years in live events we’ve ever seen. It means the industry as a whole is under a microscope, and everyone needs to consistently step their game up.”

PRIMARY TICKETING The primary ticketing business is incredibly competitive, with a remarkable proliferation of business models. Ticketmaster, it can certainly be agreed, takes a walloping share of the business – potentially well over half – though the closure of its Seatwave and GetMeIn resale

London’s The O2 reported 2million ticket sales in 2018.

66 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES UK

platforms last summer put it on the side of the good guys in the secondary market debate.

Vivendi’s See Tickets is commonly regarded as the second in the market while AXS, Eventim and Eventbrite complete the field of international corporates. Indies include longstanding Manchester stalwart Ticketline, Birmingham’s The Ticket Factory, Preston-based Skiddle, Nottingham’s Gigantic, Leeds’ Ticket Arena, and mobile ticketing and discovery platform, Dice.

In a highly competitive market, there is no option to stand still, and competing operators constantly add to their range of services.

Gigantic has increased its sales by 10% in the past 12 months. It handled the Spotify presale for Pink’s 2019 stadium tour and developed a fully paperless ticketing system to eradicate unauthorised ticket resales for Ed Sheeran’s August outdoor shows in Leeds and Ipswich.

Skiddle established new offices in Manchester and London, to add to existing bases in Lancashire and Liverpool, and announced a 30% increase in turnover for 2018, including gross sales of £60million (€65m) on 3.5m tickets – a 22.5% year-on-year increase.

Ticketline has been in operation for more than 40 years and its clients include independent festivals such as Kendal Calling, Love Supreme and Beat-Herder. The modern role of the ticketing partner goes far beyond simply processing sales, says Ticketline head of marketing James Lee. “We offer targeted marketing, sales strategy and in-depth reporting, as well as first-class customer and box-office support and real-time scanning access control solutions,” he adds.

The Ticket Factory, which developed from the NEC Box Office, handles Resorts World Arena and Arena Birmingham in the UK’s second city, as well as broader inventory including national sport and shows in

London’s West End. Along with SecuTix, the company recently took on Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham, which had worked with Ticketmaster for 25 years.

“The Ticket Factory had a fantastic 2018 but there’s undoubtedly been a slowdown in the market in 2019,” says Richard Howle, The Ticket Factory’s director of ticketing. “As well as fewer events going on sale, there is certainly a Brexit effect. The lead-up to the original Brexit deadline at the end of March resulted in the same drop in sales that we normally experience during a General Election campaign.”

There are also signs of a general pushback on ticket prices, Howle notes. “Some acts that sold easily a couple of years ago have returned with higher prices this year and struggled to shift the same volume of tickets. However, the right act at the right price will still fly. That shows that the underlying market is alive and well but we shouldn’t take it for granted.”

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES The buzz around mobile since early 2018 signals the beginning of the end for paper tickets, and numerous agents now work on a mobilefirst basis. “Buying a ticket and going to a concert should be as easy as ordering an Uber or a Deliveroo,” says Parsons.

The implications are significant for marketing and security he adds.

“Delivering a ticket to each fan’s smartphone means we know who walks in the door, not just who bought the tickets,” adds Parsons, who points to Four Tet’s four 100%-mobile O2 Academy Brixton shows in October 2019 as a good test case. “Not one ticket was resold, which is exactly what Four Tet was aiming for.”

Since then, AMG has rolled out 100% mobile ticketing across its entire portfolio, and Manchester Arena, the UK’s largest indoor venue, has done the same, with venues across the UK expected to follow suit.

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The Royal Albert Hall is set to host 401 arena shows and 1,300 smaller events in about 350 working days in 2019 – its busiest year ever.

Clearly, there are significant infrastructure implications of a shift to mobile, and Gigantic Tickets founder, Mark Gasson, expects to see a lot more collaboration between the major agents to make systems work.

“With regard to mobile tickets, it will be necessary for many agents to work together to allow customers to be scanned into venues.

“If you have an event where multiple agents have sold tickets, it makes sense to allow each agent to fulfil via their own tech, and all tickets to be scanned via one means,” he says. Adding that, “Gigantic’s GigScan app will scan a million fans into events this year.”

VALUE OF MARKET The UK music industry grew by 2% in 2017 to contribute a record £4.5billion (€4.8bn) gross value added (GVA) to the economy, of which live music was responsible for £991m (€1.1bn) [source: UK Music’s Measuring Music 2018 report]. Live was down slightly from £1bn (€1.1bn) the year before.

SECONDARY TICKETING Taciturn secondary ticketing site Viagogo continues to pursue its controversial business but its future in the UK looks increasingly fraught. The Competition and Markets Authority in July launched contempt-of-court proceedings, alleging Viagogo had not done enough to change its business practices in the wake of repeated warnings to comply with consumer law.

Two weeks later, Google suspended the company as an advertiser.

There had been signs Viagogo was attempting to grow up. It recently broke cover to apologise for missing a Parliamentary hearing on ticketing in March 2017, managing director Cris Miller calling the non-appearance “clearly a mistake.” But Adam Webb, campaign manager of anti-touting lobby group FanFair Alliance, believes Viagogo’s business has lost significant impetus.

“Although it is hard to gauge how much Viagogo are making, there’s definitely a reduction in tickets going onto Viagogo,” says Webb. “That’s

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INTERNATIONAL PROFILES UK

from a combination of them having to become more transparent and the impact of the bad press. Viagogo are slowly being de-fanged, and it is a very different market now. Secondary ticketing has been estimated at about £1bn (€1.1bn) before, and now it should be a lot smaller than that.”

Ebay’s StubHub still operates in the UK, though the end of its sixyear partnership with AEG in September 2018 cast doubt on its ability to pivot into the primary ticketing world.

In recent years, meanwhile, face-value ticket resale platforms from primary operators have proliferated to the point of ubiquity. Operators such as Twickets, TicketSwap and Dice have always included resale as a central part of their proposition, and while Ticketmaster’s fan-to-fan ticket exchange received the most fanfare on launch in December 2018, it was actually beaten to the market by See Tickets’ Fan-to-Fan, Eventim’s fanSALE and Skiddle’s Re:Sell.

This year, AXS has followed suit with Official Resale, as has Ticketline with Fanticks. Others such as The Ticket Factory and Gigantic integrate with Twickets, and Gigantic has also built its own face-value resale offering, with a full rollout in late 2019.

“We created Fanticks to support our customers, to beat the touts and ensure that customers are protected and obtain tickets to events at face value or less,” says Lee. “All tickets are inspected and verified prior to publication to ensure they are genuine.”

See Tickets global CEO Rob Wilmshurst recently noted the paradox of fan-to-fan resale: that as unpopular as secondary ticketing is, fans with unwanted tickets don’t always want to resell at face value.

Nonetheless, he said, plenty of inventory is rolling back in. “We launched [Fan-to-Fan] as a PR exercise, really, and there is little money in it. [But] we made our money once – we don’t need to make it again.”

Ethical reseller Twickets works directly with acts including Adele, Ed Sheeran, the Arctic Monkeys and many others. Certainly, says Webb, artists have far more power to control the impact of touts on their shows than they had a few years ago.

“I think if you are playing theatres, all-seated with allocated seats, you can definitely stop it now,” he says. “You can set your terms and conditions accordingly and you can enforce them. If it’s a standing venue, it’s more difficult, but you can definitely take steps to mitigate touting and to drastically reduce it.”

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The UK has some of everything, in terms of incoming talent, domestic shows and exports. The O2 in London was officially the most popular live music arena in the world once again in 2018, with more than 2m tickets sold.

Three of the top ten most successful worldwide tours were from UK acts, namely runaway leader Sheeran, Roger Waters (9), and the Rolling Stones (10).

CULTURAL ANALYSIS For all the UK’s large-scale, ticket-selling exploits, its grass-roots remain in a bad state, ravaged by venue closures and struggling for funding.

In May 2019, Arts Council England announced a ring-fenced fund of £1.5m (€1.6m) in National Lottery money, to offer grants in the range of £1,000 (€1,079) to £40,000 (€43,150) to qualifying music venues and promoters.

TAXES & CHARGES VAT at 20% is payable on concert tickets in the UK. Booking or service charges are less standardised but hover at around 10 or 11% of the face value of a ticket, plus delivery, collection, and home-printing charges.

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LANGUAGES ENGLISH, SPANISH POPULATION (MILLIONS) 329.3 CURRENCY DOLLAR GDP/CAPITA (US$) 59,800 INTERNET USERS (MILLIONS) 246.8 SMARTPHONE PENETRATION % 68.4 POPULATION % AGED 15-24 13.3 POPULATION % AGED 25-54 39.5 PWC ESTIMATED 2019 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 8,621 PWC FORECAST 2023 LIVE MUSIC TICKET SALES US$MILLIONS 10,095

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here is currently an unprecedented generational shift in the US ticketing industry. Boomers are retiring and preparing millennials to advance into leadership roles. With this change comes a group of digital-age professionals for whom technology is second nature. This is unlike their decades-older peers who are immigrants to technology, having adopted – and adapted to – the new systems and technological processes that continue to transform ticketing.

Blockchain is still on everyone’s minds, but there hasn’t been significant penetration or adoption yet. However, it does offer interesting value propositions for both security and data, with private blockchains proposed for use within organisations. Indeed, groups that control their own blockchain will control the data and circle of engagement.

Individual US states are lining up legislation to control an industry and a market that refuses to be controlled. Legislation abounds at the federal level, too, although industry insiders don’t expect to see it accomplish much, and every state is trying to influence fee structures, event availability, event access and equitable practices for fans.

Ultimately, it will be impossible to do this because entertainment ticketing is a free and open market that creates its own rules. As an example, the UK requires entertainment organisations to show ticket prices with all mandatory fees and charges included. This regulation would be difficult for US municipalities to implement because it may be in disagreement with a state law.

Held in June 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop on online event tickets explored a variety of consumer protection issues, including primary market availability, pricing and more. “The group of experts included in the various FTC panels did not cover a wide enough cross section of our industry,” says Maureen Andersen, president and CEO of the International Ticketing Association (INTIX).

“Sentiment remains that there cannot be real change until the right people get together in the same room for a real and open dialogue.”

As governments seek to impose legislation, the primary and secondary markets are becoming more and more blurred. This is making it even harder for consumers to differentiate between sellers.

For years, the industry sent fans to venues directly, spending a huge amount of time and money to drive them there. Today, customers are defining relationships on their own terms. Fans don’t care where they buy their tickets as long as they have access to do so whenever and wherever they want to make a purchase. For example, they may have a deeper relationship with a secondary provider like StubHub or SeatGeek and go there first. This practice began when primary sellers had fewer seats that had already been distributed, so fans had to find a new partner that still had inventory to sell. This customer behaviour means primary sellers have to forge deep relationships with multiple distribution sites, so there is a diversification of open distribution. The industry is also watching with interest the eventual valuation and purchase of StubHub, which parent company eBay is considering divesting.

“With the volume of tickets moving through a variety of sales channels, it is challenging and somewhat perplexing that the industry doesn’t have better solutions for these partners and that the customer experience is so fragmented in this day and age of a digital world,” Amy Graca, Caesars Entertainment’s vice president of global ticketing, told INTIX’s Access.

Ultimately, it’s not always about the pricing; these partnerships between primary and secondary sellers offer additional channels to

72 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

move tickets, and choice for consumers. At the same time, secondary ticketing remains a big adjunct business for Ticketmaster and other large primary technology players, as well as high-volume teams and venues.

The roster of big-name artists trying to push out secondary sellers hasn’t changed much, though there is a continued evolution of sales practices. As Metallica got a public slap on the wrist for scalping 88,000 of its own tickets on secondary sites, and Live Nation admitted doing this for “about a dozen artists” between 2016 and 2017, every act has started offering tickets at market prices through platinum seats, VIP offerings and more. Whatever the fans will buy, the bands will sell them.

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This is done using data and technology that speaks to customers and gives them what they want in the moment. Even after they’ve already arrived at the show, upgrades and upsells cater to the customer desire for perks. Fans can change their experience on the fly at the venue by purchasing seat upgrades and other extras.

© LUBOSLAV TILES

PRIMARY TICKETING While there continues to be a consolidation of ticketing-system and related organisations, there are still dozens of vendors competing for business across numerous genres, including concerts and festivals, pro sports, college athletics, performing arts and attractions, among others. These groups continue to extol their individual strengths and stand-out features in a highly competitive market. Major players include Ticketmaster, Paciolan, Tickets.com, Tessitura Network, AudienceView, AXS, Eventbrite, Patron Technology and SeatGeek.

With today’s heightened security concerns, there is a rapidly gaining importance to know who is in every seat in your building, so it’s only a matter of time before consumers will be required to check-in to identify themselves in advance of a live event just as they do for a flight.

Today’s partnerships in the primary market are often about distribution. They may not be exclusive, but they are driving sales across a growing number of channels so that consumers can buy what

Radio City Music Hall in New York was the second biggest-selling theatre in the USA in 2018.

With a flagship event in Las Vegas, Electric Daisy Carnival festival has become a global brand.

they want when they want to buy it. Groupon has become even more deeply entrenched with live event tickets – particularly for distressed inventory – offering prices that range from a considerable discount to the identical pricing as the primary seller. There is also a rise in partnerships that improve the overall event experience, like Clear, Lyft and American Express, all for expedited entry, pick-up/drop-off at the gate closest to your seats with peer-to-peer ridesharing companies and Stay22 for nearby accommodation.

Fans are still buying VIP packages that include fast-lane entry, souvenir laminates, exclusive tour gear, private merchandise shopping, premium seats and/or meet and greets, however, the real-time, choose-as-you-go experience at the venue is emerging as a new way to generate incremental revenue and cater to fans looking for ease, comfort and added value.

SECONDARY TICKETING The secondary market for live events tickets, especially music and sports, remains prevalent in the United States. The field is growing, and dominant players include StubHub, VividSeats, Ticketmaster and SeatGeek. Some of these powerhouses, including Ticketmaster and SeatGeek, also operate as primary sellers. In addition, there are still the traditional bricks-and-mortar brokers, as well as hundreds of other companies and individuals that operate cottage industries online.

While there has been no big change in the key secondary-market players, there is talk across multiple states of introducing legislation that would ban speculative secondary sales. Monitoring that would be almost impossible, so for now the industry continues to police this speculation, which contributes to the blurred lines between secondary and primary.

The industry is also watching the trend of secondary sellers being banned from Google, which means they can no longer pay to appear at the top of search results.

VALUE OF MARKET The total value of the US entertainment and live events ticketing market is not definitively known. Some acts don’t report their sales and there has been no determination as to exactly how to calculate ticketing revenue.

“This is an ongoing discussion in the industry. Ultimately, the official number of available seats or standing-room spots comes from the venue, so capacity is the easy part,” says Andersen. “But how do you calculate the revenue when a ticket is purchased and then resold, or when sales go through multiple channels? Even the definition of ‘face value’ is changing. It’s no longer determined solely by the promoter or by

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 73

INTERNATIONAL PROFILES USA

The Staples Center in Los Angeles.

a venue putting a show on sale, because of different pricing models, dynamic pricing and secondary channels. Today, face value is defined by the customer at the time of purchase, regardless of when and where they make that purchase.”

Nonetheless, Grand View Research Inc issued a report that predicts the global online event ticketing market will reach approximately $68billion (€61.4bn) by 2025. Market researcher, Technavio, expects the secondary market to generate $15.2bn (€13.7bn) by 2020.

INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS & GENRES The major genres in the United States are music, festivals, professional sports, college athletics, commercial and not-for-profit performing arts, as well as general admission entertainment, including clubs, fairs and museums. Gaming events are becoming incredibly popular, too, with large events centred around titles such as Fortnite and Overwatch. What remains to be seen is how regulation and state-bystate issues will inform and shape this entertainment trend.

In addition to the blending of primary and secondary ticketing, we are seeing a combination of event types. The Metarama festival in Las Vegas is promoting a “first-of-its-kind experience” where gaming, live music, e-sports and comedy collide.

DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Digitisation is making huge inroads when it comes to ticket delivery in the United States. Both Ticketmaster SafeTix and AXS Flash Seats use dynamic barcodes as an added layer of security; the National Football League has gone fully digital at all stadiums, and colleges including Baylor, LSU, Michigan State, Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) and Georgia Tech; and Rutgers are going contactless. Ticketmaster has also announced that fans can now find and buy tickets using Amazon Alexa. Digital delivery has also made it possible for organisations to sell commemorative hard tickets to those who have a nostalgia for (or a collection of) ticket stubs. This is more evident in sports and live music, with performing arts moving forward more gingerly.

Juniper Research expects mobile users to account for more than 50% of digital ticketing in 2019. Looking ahead, the research firm predicts that users of mobile ticketing will total 1.9bn by 2023, up from 1.1bn in 2019.

CULTURAL ANALYSIS There is a generational shift when it comes to consumer desires, technology and the leadership that is driving our industry into the future.

Younger consumers and ticketing professionals have no patience for technology that doesn’t favour a digital experience. As these

74 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

technological advancements create positive change, boomers and Xers will wonder why we didn’t do it sooner.

In today’s customer-centric world, the decades-old ‘no refunds, no exchanges, all sales are final’ policy just doesn’t work. “The digital age makes it easy for us to help our customers versus pushing them and their discretionary spending over to someone who will take care of them. The reality is that every ticket office will make a decision to take care of a customer, and this is particularly prevalent in the performing arts, so we should be more welcoming in our messaging, too,” says Andersen.

“Ultimately, experience drives loyalty, so if you start the experience with the word ‘no,’ it is that much more difficult to foster long-term relationships.”

Many organisations are partnering with refund protection vendors to offer additional flexibility for their customers.

In sports and college athletics, there is an increasing emphasis on catering to children and the overall family experience. “Game attendance is suffering across the board, so sports business professionals must shift some of their focus to the long game and pay more attention to their youngest fans – kids aged 12 and under. Engaging with this demographic is achievable through the creation or advancement of a kids’ club. These kids’ club programmes can help develop fans for life as part of a cradleto-grave marketing strategy, but only if you create a great experience,” says Nick Begley, senior marketing manager for AudienceView.

At Burning Man festival, kids 12 and under get in for free with their parent or guardian. This helps build the community for which the festival is known and fulfils millennials’ desire that their family must be included.

“I’ve learned so much by participating in the event from such a young age,” Lulu Lurline, ticketing project manager for Burning Man Project, told INTIX’s Access. Lurline first went to Burning Man when she was six years old. “I think that, more than anything, Burning Man teaches children that anything is possible, and growing older doesn’t have to mean growing out of play, or exploration or taking risks.”

TAXES & CHARGES Tax on tickets continues to be established by state and/or municipal government, so the rate and/or regulator charge(s) vary widely depending on location.

Quite simply, ticket fees and charges are a revenue stream for live entertainment organisations. They are accepted and understood by consumers but remain a hot-button issue. Fees and charges can be levied in various ways, including the add-on, per-ticket, per-order and/ or per-item costs that fans love to hate; inside or blended charges (hidden in the ticket price); and included charges (common way to collect taxes).

PARTNERS

PARTNERS MOSCOW TICKETING FORUM

EUROLATAM

Moscow Ticketing Forum (MTF) is the main business event in Russia dedicated to ticket solutions and technologies. Once a year, the entire ticketing industry, from top managers of ticketing platforms to the heads of ticketing departments, gather at MTF to “compare notes.” The event’s main goal is to build a communication platform for key players of the ticketing technologies and solutions market in Russia: ticket operators, service providers and ticket agents, the largest sports events, concerts and festival organisers, museums, theatres, exhibition venues, sports clubs and stadiums. Retargeting technologies, dynamic pricing, ticket refund rules, the choice between sales channels and ticketing operators, the level of employee qualifications – these and dozens of other vital topics are covered – in the form of discussions, case studies, workshops and individual consultations. MTF also hosts an award ceremony for ticketing solutions and technologies – Moscow Ticketing Awards.

9 April 2020 | ticketingforum.ru

EuroLatam is the most important event for the sports industry in Latin America, and the only one to generate strategic ties with Europe. It is an initiative that drives continuous improvement, innovation and collaboration in a conducive and open environment for decision-makers.

28–29 October 2019 | eurolatamsummit.com

INTIX The 41st INTIX Annual Conference and Exhibition, long heralded as the most important event of the year for entertainment ticketing professionals, is for everyone who is directly or indirectly involved in ticketing the arts, professional sports, college athletics, arenas, fairs & festivals, ticket distribution and entertainment management. Major suppliers are represented at the exhibition. Organisations and vendors alike use the conference to network with established colleagues and make valuable new connections. The ever-growing event offers dynamic speakers, engaging educational sessions and exciting social events that encourage networking with old friends and new contacts. In 2020, the conference includes an extra day of activities, exciting venue tours, more networking opportunities, new programming elements, added exhibition time, education, town hall and keynotes, plus more festivities. INTIX 2020 is your one-stop shop for all the products and services you need to keep your ticket office running, featuring multifaceted technology vendors.

20-23 January 2020 | intix.org

REEPERBAHN FESTIVAL Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany, presents more than 900 events spanning a range of genres in locations around the city’s Reeperbahn district. In addition to concerts by international artists held in a wide variety of venues, the festival programme includes events in the fields of art, film, literature and discourse. Reeperbahn Festival also brings a variety of sessions, showcases and networking events to music industry professionals from all over the world. At Reeperbahn 2019 over 5,000 professionals will have the opportunity to enjoy around 600 concerts and showcases, and 400 conference events with sessions, meetings, and awards.

18–21 September 2019 | reeperbahnfestival.com

TICKET SUMMIT Ticket Summit brings together hundreds of industry leaders and small business owners in the ticketing and live entertainment industries for a one-of-a-kind networking event. From industry panel sessions and keynotes to a comprehensive trade show, Ticket Summit provides you with the industry tools and information you need to succeed. Ticket Summit is the leading conference and trade show for ticketing and live entertainment executives and small business owners.

7–9 July 2020 | ticketsummit.org

TICKETING PROFESSIONALS CONFERENCE

EUROSONIC NOORDERSLAG

The Ticketing Professionals Conference (TPC) is an educationally led event focusing on innovation, best practice, and continued improvement in the entertainment ticketing sector. It is run by people who work in OUR industry, not for commercial gain but to improve how we all work and develop as professionals. TPC attracts over 400 professionals from over 20 countries. Delegates come from all main strands of entertainment ticketing, performing arts, sports, attractions and festivals.

25-27 March 2020 | ticketingprofessionals.co.uk

Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) is a non-profit, European artists only, 100% showcase festival and music conference. ESNS is the key exchange and networking platform for European music, with a proven track record for helping new acts break into the international music scene. Selling out each year, ESNS attracts over 4.000 professional delegates, including 400 international festivals, and showcases for around 350 European artists, with over 40.000 visitors in total.

15–18 January 2020 | esns.nl

INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019 • 75

INDEX

COMPANY INDEX A

D

J

Activity Stream (INTL) activitystream.com

Damai (CN) damai.cn

Jegymester (HU) jegymester.hu

AdTicket (DE) adticket.de

Digitick (FR) digitick.com

Juven (HK) juven.co

All Access (AR) allaccess.com.ar

Don Boletón (MX) donboleton.com

Alltickets (CH) alltickets.ch

Dutchband (NL) dutchband.com

APACTix (SG) apactix.com Art Mate (HK) art-mate.net

K Kassir.ru (RU) kassir.ru

E

Koobin (ES) koobinevent.com

AudienceView (INTL) audienceview.com

e+ (JP) eplus.jp

Kupat (IL) 2207.kupat.co.il

AXS (INTL) axs.com

eBilet (PL) ebilet.pl

Kvitki (BY) kvitki.by

ElectroStub (CA) electrostub.com B

EntradaFan (AR) entradafan.com.ar

L

Baltic Ticket Holdings (INTL) piletilevi.ee

Entradas.com (ES) entradas.com

Lawson HMV Entertainment (JP) lawson.jp

Best Tickets (BG) besttickets.bg

Eticket (MX) eticket.mx

Lippupiste (FI) lippu.fi

Bgbileti.com (BG) bgbileti.com

Eventbrite (INTL) eventbrite.com

Live Pass (AR) livepass.com.ar

Biļešu Paradīze (LV) bilesuparadize.lv

Eventfrog (CH) eventfrog.ch

Livepass (BR) livepass.com.br

Biļešu Serviss (LV) bilesuserviss.lv Bilet.bg (BG) bilet.bg

Livetickets.ro (RO) livetickets.ro F

Bilet.ro (RO) bilet.ro

FanSALE (INTL) fansale.de

bilete.ro (RO) bilete.ro

Fanticks (UK) fanticks.com

Maoyan (CN) maoyan.com

Biletinial (TR) biletinial.com

Festicket (INTL) festicket.com

Moshtix (AU) moshtix.com.au

Biletino (TR) biletino.com

France Billet (FR) francebillet.com

MTS (RU) moskva.mts.ru

Biletix (TR) biletix.com

Funcode.hu (HU) funcode.hu

Bilettix (DE) bilettix.net Bilietai (LT) bilietai.lt

G Gigantic (UK) gigantic.com

Billetlugen (DK) billetlugen.dk

Go Out (CZ) goout.net

Billetreduc.com (FR) Billetreduc.com

GoTicket (SK) goticket.sk

Billetten (DK) billetten.dk

GUTS Tickets (NL) guts.tickets

Blueticket (PT) blueticket.pt

MyTicket (UK) myticket.co.uk Myticket.ro (RO) myticket.ro

N NTRY (AT) ntry.at Nordic Wristbands (NO) nordicwristbands.com

H

BOL (PT) bol.pt

HK Clubbing (HK) hkclubbing.com

Boletia (MX) boletia.com

HK Ticketing (HK) hkticketing.com

BookMyShow (INTL) bookmyshow.com

O Oeticket (AT) oeticket.com Onebox (ES) oneboxtm.com

I C

Music Glue (UK) musicglue.com MyTicket (DE) myticket.de

Billet.dk (DK) billet.dk

Bohemia Ticket (CZ) bohemiaticket.cz

M

Ingresse (BR) ingresse.com

Circles Group (LU) circlesgroup.com

Ingresso (BR) ingresso.com

Cityline (HK) cityline.com

Ingresso Rápido (BR) ingressorapido.com.br

Computicket (SA) online.computicket.com

Insider.in (IN) insider.in

CrowdTorch (CA) crowdtorch.com

Interticket (HU) interticket.com

CTS Eventim (INTL) eventim.de

iTickets (SA) itickets.co.za

Culturall (AT) culturall.at

76 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

Oxynade (INTL) oxynade.com Oztix (AU) oztix.com.au

INDEX

P

T

Tiketore (JP) tiketore.com

Paciolan (US) paciolan.com

Tele Ticket Service (BE) teleticketservice.com

Tiketti (FI) tiketti.fi

Panda Ticket (FR) panda-ticket.com

Tessitura Network (US) tessituranetwork.com

Tiqueteo (ES) tiqueteo.com

Patron Technology (US) patrontechnology.com

TEX (HU) tex.hu

Tixa (HU) tixa.hu

Paylogic (INTL) paylogic.com

The Ticket Factory (UK) theticketfactory.com

TixBox (TR) tixbox.com

Peatix (JP) peatix.com

Tickcats (HK) tickcats.co

Tixserve (IR) tixserve.com

Pelago (HK) pelago.events

Ticket Arena (UK) ticketarena.co.uk

Tootoot.fm (SK) tootoot.fm

Piletilevi (EE) piletilevi.ee

Ticket Fairy (INTL) theticketfairy.com

TopShow (AR) topshow.com.ar

Plankton (SA) plankton.mobi

Ticket Gretchen (AT) ticketgretchen.com

TuEntrada (AR) tuentrada.com

Platinumlist (UAE) dubai.platinumlist.net

Ticket Pia (JP) t.pia.jp

TuneStub (CA) tunestub.com

Ponominalu (RU) ponominalu.ru

Ticket Window (CA) ticketwindow.ca

Twickets (UK) twickets.co.uk

Predpredaj.sk (SK) predpredaj.sk

Ticketbande (DE) ticketbande.de

PuntoTicket (CL) puntoticket.com

Ticketcorner (CH) ticketcorner.ch

Q

U

Ticketea (INTL) ticketea.com

Universe (INTL) universe.com

Ticketek (INTL) ticketek.com

Urbtix (HK) urbtix.hk

Queue-it (INTL) queue-it.com

Ticketflap (HK) ticketflap.com

Quicket (SA) quicket.co.za

Ticketgenie (IN) ticketgenie.in

V

Ticketing Platform (RU) ticketingplatform.eu

Vendini (INTL) vendini.com

Ticketland (RU) ticketland.ru

Viagogo (INTL) viagogo.com

RedKassa (RU) redkassa.ru

Ticketline (UK) ticketline.co.uk

VisionOne (AR) accesso.com

Reservix (DE) reservix.de

Ticketline (INTL) ticketlinesolutions.com

Viva.gr (GR) viva.gr

Ticketline (PT) ticketline.sapo.pt

Vivaticket (IT) vivaticket.it

Ticketmaster (INTL) ticketmaster.com

VividSeats (US) vividseats.com

R

S SAP (DE) sap.com/germany

Ticketmatic (NL) ticketmatic.com

SeatGeek (US) seatgeek.com

TicketNew (IN) ticketnew.com

See Tickets (INTL) seetickets.com

Ticketon (CZ) ticketon.cz

Webtickets (SA) webtickets.co.za

SISTIC (SG) sistic.com.sg

TicketOne (IT) ticketone.it

Wegow (ES) wegow.com

Skiddle (UK) skiddle.com

TicketPlan (UK) ticketplangroup.com

Wien Tickets (AT) wien-ticket.at

Smartticket.cn (CN) smartticket.cn

TicketPony (SA) ticketpony.co.za

Sports Hub Tix (SG) sportshub.com.sg

Ticketportal (AR) ticketportal.com.ar

Starticket (CH) starticket.sg

Ticketportal (BG) ticketportal.bg

Zappa (IL) zappa-club.co.il

Stubhub (ES) stubhub.es

Ticketportal (CZ) ticketportal.cz

Zoonga (IN) zoonga.com

Stubhub (INTL) stubhub.com

Ticketportal (INTL) ticketportal.sk

Superboletos (MX) superboletos.com

Ticketpro (INTL) ticketpro.com

Sympla (BR) sympia.com.br

TicketPro (SA) ticketpro.co.za Tickets Cloud (RU) ticketscloud.org Tickets4Fun (BR) ticketsforfun.com.br Tickets.com (US) tickets.com Tickets.ie (IE) tickets.ie TicketSteam (RU) ticketsteam.ru TicketStream (CZ) ticketstream.cz TicketStream (SK) ticketstream.sk Ticketswap (INTL) ticketswap.com TicketWeb (IE) ticketweb.com Tiketa (LT) tiketa.lt

78 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019

W

Z

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