INTERNATIONAL PROFILES
HUNGARY Language: Hungarian | Population (millions): 9.9 | Currency: Forint | GDP/Capita (US$): 27,500 | Internet Users (millions): 7.8 | Smartphone penetration: 51.3% | Population % aged 15–24: 11.0 | Population % aged 25–54: 41.9 | PwC estimated 2017 live revenues US$millions: 58 | PwC forecast 2021 live revenues US$millions: 67
Held on an island in the River Danube, Sziget Festival has been attracting fans from all over the world for quarter of a century
Relatively recent market entrant Tixa sells entirely online, with no paper tickets at all. “We sell 300,000 tickets a year and it’s all e-tickets,” says Tixa CEO Balázs Varga. “That is the way it is going. The bigger ticket companies have ticket outlets, but I believe more in the UK model where you have venue box offices and that is probably enough.” VALUE OF MARKET There are no published estimates of the value of the Hungarian live business. SECONDARY TICKETING Homegrown e-ticket marketplace Tickething is working to develop the secondary market in Hungary, along with international player Ticketswap and, through its onboard resale service, Tixa. “The main thing is to protect the customer and avoid negative experiences from resale,” says Varga.
H
ungary is in a dark moment, with prime minister Viktor Orbán‘s unsavoury regime flexing its muscles against the media, migrants and minorities in general. Live music is still rumbling through, but this nation in the heart of Europe is rapidly losing international friends. PRIMARY TICKETING Interticket, with its local Jegy.com brand, is the longstanding ticketing market-leader, working with most of Hungary’s larger venues and offering its service to others as a white-label option. Ticketpro handles much of the large-scale international traffic through its association with Live Nation – upcoming shows on-sale include Gorillaz, Sting, Chris Rea, Depeche Mode and Metallica. Ticketportal, strong in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, is also present in Hungary, as is Eventim and the four-year-old Tixa, which focuses on indie promoters and club shows. Budapest’s monster festival Sziget, meanwhile, operates its own ticketing and cashless payment systems. DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Most operators maintain physical retail networks of various kinds, but the trend, in Hungary, as everywhere else, is inevitably towards the Internet. “Online is getting stronger each year, but it depends on the genre,” says Ticketportal Hungary managing director Zoltán Antal. “There are still events with over 80% box office sales, as well as others with over 90% online sales.”
INTERNATIONAL/DOMESTIC SPLITS AND GENRES Budapest tends to be a marginally less popular touring destination than Prague, and both compete with Kraków when the central European dates are being thrashed out. Nonetheless, the market has its share of incoming artists, and has certain notable domestic strengths. “The club scene is getting stronger, in terms of live music and sales and in terms of DJs,” says Varga. “But Budapest is lacking medium-sized venues. We don’t really have anything above 1,500 – the next level is a 10,000-capacity arena.” Top-selling Hungarian artists include Halott Pénz, Wellhello and Punnany Massif for a younger audience and Quimby, Kowalsky meg a Vega and Tankcsapda for older concert-goers. Tibor Bödőcs is the best-selling domestic comedian, selling out medium-sized venues every week across the country. Given that up to half a million young Hungarian workers live elsewhere in Europe, some Hungarian bands also target shows in cities such as London, Munich, and Vienna. CULTURAL ANALYSIS A blitz of fence-building on the Serbian and Croatian borders has stifled the flow of migrants into Hungary, putting the country at odds with others in the EU, and Orbán makes no bones about his desire to consolidate a nationalist, illiberal, anti-multicultural state. Such conditions don’t usually augur well for live music, though judging by this autumn’s roll call of foreign visitors, Hungary remains well on the map. TAXES AND CHARGES At 27%, Hungary has the highest standard rate of VAT in the whole of Europe, though better deals are available to promoters under the right circumstances. As a result of diligent lobbying, open-air festivals over a certain size – naturally including Sziget, which drew a record 496,000 visitors in 2016 – pay at a rate of 18%. Promoters below a certain turnover can also claim exemption.