Four years ago, the live entertainment industry was still picking itself up off the floor. Venues were dark. Tours were cancelled. Festival fields were empty. The pandemic had paused an industry that depends, fundamentally, on people gathering together in the same place at the same time.
What happened next wasn't just a recovery. It was an acceleration. And in 2024, CTS EVENTIM delivered its fourth consecutive year of record results — surpassing pre-pandemic levels not by a narrow margin, but comprehensively, across every segment of the business.
The recovery that became a structural shift
The initial post-pandemic surge was easy to explain: pent-up demand. People wanted to go out. They wanted concerts, festivals, sporting events. Tickets sold fast and sold out faster. But pent-up demand, by definition, is temporary. It should have normalised by now.
It didn't. And that's the interesting part. What the pandemic appears to have done is permanently revalue the experience economy. People who spent two years watching screens decided, collectively, that live experiences are worth more than they thought. And they're spending accordingly — not just on tickets, but on premium seats, hospitality packages, and the kind of multi-day festival experiences that justify a flight and a hotel.
CTS EVENTIM sits at the intersection of all of that demand. As Europe's largest ticketing company and the second largest globally, the platform processes over 300 million tickets annually. Every major tour, every stadium show, every festival season, and an increasingly significant portfolio of international sporting events flow through the same infrastructure.
What drove Q4
The fourth quarter was particularly strong, driven by a combination of late-season touring, holiday-period sales, and the advance on-sale activity for 2025 events. Q4 is always a bellwether for the following year — when fans buy tickets months in advance, it's a forward indicator of demand that has already been locked in.
The ticketing segment delivered strong transaction growth, underpinned by continued digital adoption and the expansion of API-based distribution channels. More tickets are being sold through partner integrations — hospitality providers, corporate programmes, travel operators — than ever before. The platform's REST API has become a growth channel in its own right, enabling distribution models that didn't exist five years ago.
The live entertainment segment, operating under EVENTIM LIVE, expanded both its touring and festival portfolio. New venues, new markets, and a roster of tours that consistently sold out faster than the previous year's.
The structural advantage
There's a network effect at work that gets stronger with scale. As more events run on the platform, the data gets richer. Richer data enables better marketing, better pricing, and better personalisation. Better personalisation drives higher conversion rates. Higher conversion rates attract more rights holders and promoters to the platform. And the cycle continues.
This isn't a story about one good year. It's a story about a company whose structural position in the live entertainment value chain gets more defensible with every passing quarter. The platform, the network, the data, and the operational expertise compound in ways that are very difficult to replicate.
Looking ahead
The 2025 event pipeline was already strong at the time of reporting, with significant advance sales across touring, festivals, and international sporting events. Multiple Olympic and Paralympic Games programmes are in various stages of planning and delivery. The integration of recent acquisitions continues to add both scale and capability.
Four consecutive records is an achievement. But the more telling metric is the gap between EVENTIM's growth rate and the broader market's. When you're growing faster than the market in a market that's itself growing, the compounding effects are significant. The question isn't whether 2025 will be another record. It's by how much.