Owners sell TEG to technology investors

The owners of leading live entertainment and ticketing business TEG, which runs the Ticketek platform, have announced that the business is to be sold to multinational technology investment firm Silver Lake.

An announcement from TEG this morning advised that the US-based "Silver Lake has signed a definitive agreement to acquire TEG from funds advised by Affinity Equity Partners Pte Ltd and its affiliates"

Silver Lake Partners is a big name in global private equity with an emphasis on technology having more than $US40 billion in assets. However, until now it has not had a presence in Australia.

Current TEG owners, pan-Asian private equity firm Affinity Equity Partners, are believed to have secured around $1 billion for the business.

The move by Silver Lake follows it having taken a stake in entertainment and sport facilities company Oak View Group last year, combining to redeveloping the Key Arena in Seattle, which is used for ice hockey.

According to a report in The Australian last month, Silver Lake is also looking to acquire US-based ticketing platform StubHub.

With over 40 years of experience in ticketing and live entertainment, TEG operates as the exclusive ticketing provider for over 135 venue and promoter clients and delivers 30 million tickets annually for over 30,000 events spanning live sports, concerts, theatre, festivals, and exhibitions across more than 13 countries.

TEG’s integrated live entertainment platform combines ticketing and event promotion, venue management, data analytics and marketing services. TEG promotes over 100 diverse events annually: its TEG Live and TEG Dainty divisions have promoted some of the world’s biggest names in live sports and entertainment including Hugh Jackman, Guns N’ Roses, Eminem, Katy Perry, Cirque du Soleil, Jerry Seinfeld, the Brazil national football team, and the breakthrough Australian debut of Intel Extreme Masters esports.

This morning's announcement advised that TEG’s senior management team, led by Chief Executive Geoff Jones, will continue to lead the company and remain meaningful equity partners in the new ownership structure.

Speaking about the acquisition, Jones stated "the team at Affinity have been great partners for us over the last four years and have helped us to continue to scale our business.

“We are confident that Silver Lake is the right partner for the next stage of the company’s growth. Silver Lake brings us deep technology expertise as well as important global entertainment content and live events expertise and relationships which will help us to accelerate the growth of our platform globally.”

Stephen Evans, Managing Director at Silver Lake, added “high quality live sports and entertainment content is more sought after now than ever and represents a massive global addressable market for the company.

“We believe TEG’s innovative and integrated ticketing, content, digital marketing and analytics platform is well positioned to continue to benefit from increasing consumer demand worldwide.

“We’ve been impressed by TEG’s long-term track record of growth under Geoff Jones, most recently in partnership with the Affinity team, both organically and through strategic acquisitions. We’re excited to partner with Geoff and the entire TEG team and invest further to leverage TEG’s platform and accelerate the company’s growth, both in Asia Pacific and globally.”

The transaction is expected to close later this year and is subject to customary closing conditions including approval by the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

TEG was advised on this transaction by Goldman Sachs and King & Wood Mallesons.

Silver Lake was advised by Latham & Watkins and Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Images: Ticketek contactless tickets at Suncorp Stadium (top), Geoff Jones (middle, courtesy of TEG) and Hugh Jackman, promoted by TEG (below, courtesy of Keven Mazur).