CTS Eventim strengthens presence in Israel

German ticketing and live entertainment giant CTS Eventim has opened a research and development centre in Israel, the company’s first development operation outside of Germany.

Eventim’s Israeli operation has been running since 2011. According to the International Ticketing Yearbook 2018 (ITY), Eventim was responsible for bringing modern ticketing to the country.

The company provides the largest ticketing service in the country. However, Eventim now competes in Israel with Ticketmaster, after Live Nation entered into the Israeli market in 2017, acquiring Tel Aviv-based promoter Bluestone and launching Ticketmaster Israel.

ITY reports that live music ticket sales in Israel generated an estimated US$31 million in 2018 and are projected by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to grow to $35m by 2022.

“We have the ability to cross check our own data with data coming from different services and tools”

Eventim will use its new development centre to improve and more closely target services in Israel, focusing on prediction system technologies to better gauge the sales potential of different events. The centre currently employs 12 people.

“We have the ability to cross check our own data with data coming from different services such as Last.fm and Spotify, and from tools such as Google Trends,” Ami Feinstein, managing director at CTS Eventim Israel, told Israeli business publication Calcalist.

In an exclusive interview with IQ, CTS chief executive Klaus-Peter Schulenberg said “it’s all about the right opportunities at the right time” when expanding outside of Europe, stating that “we will continue to grow both organically and through acquisitions going forward.”

Eventim reported its best-ever yearly financial results for 2018, growing revenue 20.1% to more than €1.2 billion.

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