Market Report: Greece

The live market continues to show strong growth in Greece, with revenue in the event tickets market projected to reach $121.30m in 2024, according to Statista.

In part, this is due to more well-known, international artists adding Greek dates, but there’s also the benefit of tourism. “With an annual influx of millions of tourists and a wide array of live music events and festivals, the market is poised for expansion as the country continues to draw an increasing number of international visitors,” says promoter Giannis Paltoglou, of Ejekt Festival and Detox Events.

“One of our biggest challenges is the lack of year-round venues for music events.”

But it’s not all plain sailing. “One of our biggest challenges is the lack of year-round venues for music events,” says Stefanos Kakarantzas, chief operating officer of Ticketmaster Greece. “While we have some spaces available, not having permanent options limits the number of concerts and live performances.”

Primary ticketing
More.com (formerly viva.gr) remains the leading ticketing company, commanding over 70% of market share in terms of events, mainly due to their wide coverage of theatre, music, cinema and, more recently, sports.

“More.com is one of Europe’s largest ticketing platforms, with over 4,000 partners, 370,000 productions, and 46m tickets sold,” says head of marketing, Christina Cleridou.

Ticketmaster is still a significant player, as is ComeTogether, which has introduced innovations such as blockchain technology and NFTs. Others include ticketservices.gr and Beego.

Distribution of sales
E-tickets and digital tickets are now used by over 90% of event attendees (less than 5% use physical tickets).

Secondary ticketing
Scalping and resale continue to be a problem, particularly for bigger events, with Viagogo and StubHub leading the way. The former in particular is “doing a great deal of business in Greece and allows secondary market resale without any checks and balances to ensure tickets are valid,” says Claudia Bacco of ComeTogether. “Our solutions allow event organisers to decide whether or not resale is permitted and set parameters for pricing levels.”

“Our solutions allow event organisers to decide whether or not resale is permitted and set parameters for pricing levels.”

TicketSwap also operates but controls resale pricing with a limit of 25% over the original price, while dynamic QR codes are beginning to be introduced to combat scalping.

International/domestic splits & genres
Approximately two-thirds of performances are by domestic artists with summer festivals tending to feature international artists.