Vivid Seats, a web-based ticket resale market that went public by means of a SPAC merger in 2021, is reportedly fielding acquisition provides from a number of fairness corporations hoping to take the corporate non-public, in response to a current report in Bloomberg. Firm officers have introduced on an advisory agency to assist gauge curiosity in a possible sale, in response to the report.
The acquisition buzz led to a 20% soar within the firm’s share worth on Dec. 30 that has held greater than per week after information of a purchase order first broke, closing as we speak at $4.57 per share. Vivid Seats relies in Chicago and was launched in 2001 by Jerry Bednyak and Eric Vassilatos as a competitor to resale platform StubHub and gained recognition with followers and ticket brokers for its ease of use and excessive visitors. In 2017, non-public fairness agency GTCR acquired a majority stake in Vivid Seats. A 12 months later, Bednyak and Vassilatos left the corporate and went on to launch enterprise group Skybox Capital.
In 2021, Vivid Seats merged with Horizon Acquisition Company, a particular objective acquisition firm (SPAC) managed by Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries (a stakeholder in Billboard mum or dad firm PMC as properly), and now trades on the NASDAQ underneath the ticker image SEATS. Latest SEC filings present Eldridge owns 40% of Vivid’s Class A shares. Vivid is managed by CEO Stan Chia, who joined the corporate in 2018.
In 2023, Vivid processed $3.9 billion value of transactions (in comparison with $3.2 billion in 2022) with income up 19% for the 12 months to $712 million and adjusted EBITDA up 25% to $142 million. Whereas year-end outcomes for 2024 received’t be accessible for a number of extra weeks, a current Citibank analyst report mentioned the agency stays “a sexy non-public fairness takeout candidate with a reasonably sturdy inner fee of return.”
Vivid is believed to symbolize about 25% of the North American ticket market, though its market share of live performance tickets is believed to be bigger since 52% of its gross sales are linked to music and 33% come from sports activities, in response to one analyst report. Main headwinds for the corporate embrace considerations a couple of cooling shopper market after a number of years of double-digit worth will increase within the live performance ticket area and fears of a pending crackdown on the secondary ticketing enterprise by federal authorities. A current letter to the Federal Commerce Fee from the Nationwide Impartial Expertise Group complained that suppliers to websites like Vivid and Stubhub typically deploy unlawful strategies for procuring ticketing stock, together with strategies that violate the 2016 BOTS Act. A crackdown on suppliers violating federal regulation may considerably scale back the amount of gross sales on the Vivid web site and negatively impression future revenues.
