Owners of O2 Arena and Hammersmith Apollo enter race for See Tickets

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The owners of London’s O2 Arena and Hammersmith Apollo have each entered the race to buy See Tickets, after French media group Vivendi kicked off a sales process for one of the UK’s biggest ticketing merchants.

Vivendi is hoping to fetch up to €300mn for See Tickets, according to two people familiar with the matter, and a first round of indicative bids has been submitted in recent weeks.

Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns London’s O2 Arena, and German ticketing group CTS Eventim, with which AEG co-owns London’s Hammersmith Apollo, were among them, they added.

For potential bidders, See Tickets offers a large primary ticketing merchant, which is projected to sell 43mn tickets across 10 countries this year, as well as an events arm which was behind eight big European festivals this year including the UK’s Love Supreme festival.

AEG, through its ticketing arm AXS, and Eventim already have primary ticketing businesses in the UK, but acquiring See Tickets will give the successful bidder a stronger foothold to compete with industry leader Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster. See Tickets also derives slightly less than a third of its ticketing revenues from the US.

The bidding war comes as the live events industry is experiencing a boom in demand despite the cost of living crisis.

Other suitors are also expected to get involved in the auction for See Tickets, according to people close to the process, which is projected to experience high single-digit growth over the next few years from a base of €147mn in revenues across its ticketing and festivals business this year.

See Tickets, which was part of Vivendi’s live entertainment arm Vivendi Village, would be the latest in a series of asset disposals by the French media giant. Two years ago Vivendi split its most valuable business, Universal Music Group, via a listing.

Earlier this year, the group, which is controlled by the billionaire family of its founder and noted corporate raider Vincent Bolloré, also completed a deal to buy Lagardère, a publishing and retail business.

Vivendi said the media conglomerate had “received at this stage several very encouraging offers regarding the possible sale of its ticketing and festival activities”. It also noted that the offers were non-binding, adding: “The process continues.”

CTS Eventim, which owns the 22,290-capacity Waldbühne concert theatre in Berlin and is also behind Italy’s largest multipurpose arena set to open in 2025, has been rapidly expanding its ticketing arm, which grew by 36 per cent year on year in the nine months to September to €459mn. Group revenues stood at €1.75bn during the same period.

AEG is second in market share to Ticketmaster in the US, but has struggled to take sales from the dominant participant.

Vivendi bought See Tickets for €96mn including debt in 2011. The business grew from a record shop in the English city of Nottingham into a big ticketing platform for theatre and live music. See Tickets was previously owned by theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group.

Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, is unlikely to submit a bid for See Tickets, as it could attract unwanted attention from UK regulators over antitrust concerns just as the US Department of Justice is probing the company for the same reasons, according to a person close to the auction.

AEG and Eventim declined to comment.