INTERNATIONAL PROFILES GERMANY
up rapidly. Our experience shows that packages work best if they are designed to be as customer-oriented as possible.” Bremer said the dominance of CTS Eventim and Live Nation/ Ticketmaster was “both useful and dangerous for us. As a fully independent company, it is important for us to find the perfect balance between using the potential these companies hold for us, and at the same time relying on alternative structures to secure our independence.” He admitted that the self-marketing of tickets via Neuland’s own platforms and search engines was becoming increasingly difficult. “The prices can reach disproportionate heights to the point they exclude the promoter as an advertiser. We always have to go new ways, sometimes old ones, in order to advertise our tours in the best possible way.”
DISTRIBUTION OF SALES Eventim’s head of corporate communications, Christian Steinhof, says online remains the most important sales channel. Compared to other European countries, however, the box office is still sought out by many Germans when they want to buy tickets. This is particularly true in the niche fields Bilettix deals in, where very few tickets are sold via mobile devices. Within online sales, mobile is continuing to gain traction. Ticketmaster Germany managing director Klaus Zemke told ITY that, “mobile conversion has been growing exponentially over the past year”. He confirmed that “there still remains a portion of ticket buyers who prefer to purchase their tickets at outlets, so we must work to educate fans towards the adoption of all things mobile.” The ratio of ticket sales for international vs. domestic acts is pretty balanced in Germany. While the likes of Helene Fischer, Herbert Grönemeyer and Rammstein are right up there with international stars, there’s a new generation of German-speaking artists, especially in the hip-hop genre, that sell a lot of tickets. Equally, there are no major international superstars that would dare leave out Germany when coming to Europe.
SECONDARY TICKETING
© AEG BERLIN
According to Bremer, “The secondary ticketing market has grown considerably. Artists and promoters are intensifying their
Shawn Mendes performed at Berlin’s Mercedez-Benz Arena.
40 • INTERNATIONAL TICKETING YEARBOOK 2019
countermeasures: acts such as Ed Sheeran and Rammstein have successfully carried out full ticket-personalisation at their concerts. The media impact of these measures was enormous and hopefully helps to sensitise the public to the topic.” When tickets for Sheeran’s biggest solo shows so far – two concerts at Hockenheimring, 22-23 June – went on sale, promoter FKP Scorpio obtained a temporary injunction against Viagogo from a Hamburg court. Rammstein promoter MCT also made the resale of tickets illegal in its terms and conditions. Both promoters’ CEOs, Folkert Koopmans and Scumeck Sabottka, are founding members of the recently formed Facevalue European Alliance For Ticketing (FEAT), which aims to lobby the EU to come up with Europe-wide legislation against the practice of reselling tickets at huge mark-ups. Eventim offers fans who can’t make a gig the opportunity to resell their ticket at face value via the company’s own fan-sale marketplace. Apart from that, the usual suspects are live in Germany, including StubHub/eBay, Viagogo and Ticketbande. SAP sees the secondary ticketing market as a meaningful addition to the primary market. “We offer our customers two different ways to use the secondary market for themselves,” Wohlrath explained. “On the one hand, we offer a fully integrated secondary ticketing tool in our solution, SAP Event Ticketing, and on the other hand, we offer bidirectional interfaces for the connection of external systems. Which of the options our partners use, or if they use them at all, is the decision of our partner.”
CULTURAL ANALYSIS While more and more people opt to buy digital tickets, Germans love to have physical things. This not only becomes apparent in their love for CDs and vinyl but also for paper tickets. Steinhof believes CTS Eventim has a part to play in this, seeing that its bespoke fan tickets are still popular. In general, the German ticket buyer is more price sensitive than many of their international counterparts, especially in the sports segment. What is more, there are still differences in the acceptance of payment methods in web shops, and there are still outlets that won’t accept certain credit cards.