Vivid Seats sale

A Vivid Seats sale could be in the cards for 2025, as private equities are reportedly exploring a possible purchase. Photo Credit: Pablo Heimplatz

Another day, another possible music industry sale – this time from Vivid Seats (NASDAQ: SEAT), which is reportedly receiving takeover offers amid continued investor interest in the live and ticketing space.

Word of that rumored purchase just recently entered the media spotlight, moments after reports pointed to the potential buyout of Blackstone’s SESAC. As with rumblings of the PRO’s sale, it remains to be seen whether Vivid Seats, having arrived on the public market via a 2021 SPAC merger, will in fact sell.

But according to Bloomberg, private equities have made clear their “takeover interest,” and Vivid Seats execs are said to be exploring the corresponding talks. At present, Vivid Seats stock is hovering around $4.60 per share – up about 36% across the past month but still down about 28% from the same point in 2024.

Stated differently, SEAT’s bump appears to be a response to the prospect of a sale as opposed to unbridled investor enthusiasm. Previously, Vivid Seats reported $186.61 million in Q3 2024 revenue, down slightly YoY and more than that on a quarterly basis.

Within the sum, concert-ticket marketplace revenue slipped 22% YoY to $67.70 million, though theater-ticket revenue nearly doubled at $28.71 million, the appropriate report shows.

Keeping the focus on investors’ current SEAT stakes, Barclays is said to have increased its holding by north of 350% during 2024’s third quarter, to 125,163 shares. And Geode Capital Management reportedly expanded its own Vivid Seats position by 18.9% to 1.98 million shares in the same quarter.

In the bigger picture, the industry – and especially the live and ticketing sub-sector – hardly lacks buyout interest.

It’d perhaps be premature to use the word “bubble,” but multiple players are certainly eager to get in on the concert-segment action despite Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster’s well-entrenched position.

To be sure, the latter half of 2024 delivered sizable raises for Ticketmaster competitors including Seat Unique (a $19.1 million extended Series A) and TickPick (a $250 million growth investment), to name a couple examples.

Meanwhile, StubHub this past summer explored and ultimately shelved plans for an astonishing $16.5 billion IPO – though the long-anticipated listing is presumably forthcoming. Plus, July reports suggested that ticketing platform Dice was exploring a sale valuing it in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though no such transaction has been formally announced.

Lastly, the live and ticketing boom, having curiously coincided with signs of a possible slowdown, isn’t confined to the States. After scooping up Vivendi’s See Tickets, Germany-based CTS Eventim posted record nine-month revenue last year, with double-digit Q3 growth to boot.