Features
CTS Eventim Continues Italy Expansion By Acquiring Vivo Concerti
– Clemente Zard
CEO of Vivo Concerti
CTS Eventim bought a majority stake in Italian concert promoter Vivo Concerti, closing its fourth acquisition in the Italian live entertainment market in less than eight months.
The exact stake hasn’t been determined yet, but it’ll be significant enough to consolidate the business fully, Pollstar has learned. CTS Eventim is going to hold the controlling stake through one of its local subsidiaries. The sale price wasn’t disclosed.
David Guetta, Demi Lovato, Tokio Hotel, Brian Wilson and Hans Zimmer, as well as regional stars like Benji & Fede, Mannarino and Thegiornalisti, are among the acts promoted by Vivo Concerti in the past. Upcoming shows include Anne Marie, Sam Smith, Haim, Demi Lovato,
Vivo Concerti is run by Clemente Zard, son of the late Italian impresario David Zard.
Clemente Zard recently bought Vivo off of Warner Music Italy, which owned the business since 2011, in a management buyout. He will continue to hold shares in the company, and will be based in Milan.
In addition to his role as CEO, Zard has been actively promoting concerts and musicals independently. He has also been directly working with local and international artists, such as Ian Anderson, Charles Aznavour, Alan Parsons and Spandau Ballet. The CTS Eventim deal includes all of Zard’s other activities, which are going to be transferred to Vivo Concerti.
He said he wanted to work with an international partner ever since taking over Vivo Concerti. “I am all the more delighted that, within a short time, we have found a global player in CTS Eventim, a company that is not only very familiar with our market segment, but which also shares our vision,” Zard said.
“At the same time, I would like to thank our former colleagues at Warner Music Italy, personally and on behalf of my team, for two fulfilling and formative years. During that period, we gained the self-confidence and experience to take the next step now in the development of Vivo Concerti,” he added.
Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, CEO of CTS Eventim, commented: “We are absolutely delighted at strengthening our position on the Italian market even further. The multi-faceted portfolio of Vivo Concerti complements our existing activities superbly. We also welcome Clemente Zard to the ranks of CTS Eventim – an outstanding promoter who has produced business success stories in recent years, not only as the CEO of Vivo Concerti, but also with his own undertakings.”
At the end of 2016, Vivo Concerti got sucked into a secondary ticketing scandal, uncovered by Italian TV show Le Iene, which proved that Live Nation Italy and Vivo Concerti had sold ticket inventory directly to Viagogo.
Zard had just taken over as CEO from Corrado Rizzotto, and thus had nothing to do with the ploy. Zard has taken on a strict anti-secondary ticketing stance, which will please CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, who isn’t a fan of the practice either.
CTS Eventim runs its own resale platform Fansale, which verifies tickets against its ticketing system and caps the resale price. The Lazio Regional Administrative Court in Italy’s capital Rome recently confirmed that the company was doing enough to curb the large-scale for-profit resale of tickets.
Prior to acquiring Vivo Concerti, CTS Eventim’s bought 60 percent of Italian concert and festival promoter D’Alessandro e Galli in February, following the take over of Andrea and Stefano Pieroni’s Vertigo in September and Ferdinando Salzano’s Friends & Partners in November, 2017.