Vivendi plans to sell See Tickets and festival businesses – reports

Vivendi is reportedly looking to sell See Tickets, the ticketing company it acquired more than a decade ago.

Sky News claims that Paris-headquartered Vivendi, the global media conglomerate, is already working with advisers on a potential disposal of parts of its Vivendi Village subsidiary.

The divisions it is looking to divest are said to include See Tickets and festival operations. The report claims that Paris-listed Vivendi does not believe those businesses have sufficient scale to be able to compete with industry giants such as Live Nation, Ticketmaster and AEG.

Vivendi this morning told TheTicketingBusiness.com that it was not commenting on the speculation.

See Tickets, which Vivendi acquired for €96m in September 2011, operates in the US and 12 European markets. Last year it sold 39 million tickets for sports events, museums, concerts and festivals. It offers online sales solutions, on site sales and access control, as well as marketing solutions.

Vivendi Village also operates 11 festivals in France and the UK, including Love Supreme in the UK and Garorock in France. The division also owns the L’Olympia concert venue and L’Oeuvre theatre in Paris.

Vivendi, the owner of Canal+ Group and Havas, saw revenues increase by 10.1% to €9.6bn in 2022, while EBITA grew 35.6% to €868m. In 2022, Vivendi Village’s revenues were €238m compared to €102m in 2021, which was impacted by the effects of the pandemic. See Tickets’ sale of 39 million tickets compared to 25 million in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. Twenty festivals were held in 2022, mainly in France and the UK, bringing together more than half a million festivalgoers.

Vivendi spun off Universal Music Group in 2021, retaining a 10% stake in the world’s biggest music company as it was listed in Amsterdam.