Pandora to Acquire Ticketfly for $450 million

Pandora will acquire Ticketfly in a move valued at $450 million of nearly equally balanced cash and stock. The move is aimed at creating music platform connecting fans, artists and event promoters, says the Oakland, Calif. publicly traded company.

Ticketfly provides ticketing and marketing software for approximately 1,200 venues and event promoters across North America including 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., the 19,000-capacity Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland, Burning Man and the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Pandora claims 80 million monthly active users will have access to enable artists and promoters to sell out more shows. Its recent track record includes helping the Rolling Stones sell 55,000 tickets in 24 hours, streaming Jack White’s Madison Square Garden concert to reach 38 times the number of concert attendees. Additionally, the streaming company live-streamed Mumford & Sons from Merriweather Post Pavilion, resulting in more than 1 million people’s interest two weeks.

“With Ticketfly, we will thrill music lovers and lift ticket sales for artists as the most effective marketplace for connecting music makers and fans,” said Brian McAndrews, chief executive officer at Pandora.

Ticketfly was founded in 2008. In 2014, the ticket company sold 16 million tickets to more than 90,000 live events, generating more than $500 million in transaction volume and crossing the $1 billion mark in cumulative transaction volume. Ticketfly powers more than 600 websites on behalf of its clients with an average of 14 million visitors each month. Moving forward, Ticketfly will continue to support its music and non-music clients alike.

In a statement, Andrew Dreskin Ticketfly co-founder & CEO said:

“We share a common goal of wanting to the make the end-to-end experience better for all participants in the music ecosystem. We are both ridiculously passionate about music, and want to make music and live entertainment a bigger part of people’s lives. And it just so happens that we like each other.

“This combination will be transformative for the industry. Our clients will gain access to the largest and most powerful music marketing platform in the world, which will help them to sell more tickets and generate more revenue. We will tackle the problem of event discovery for fans and make live events a bigger part of people’s lives, which is why we all got into this crazy business anyway.”

Touring facts from the announcement:

• Top artists currently earn 80 percent of their revenue through touring.
• Per capita spend on live music grew 65 percent from $29 in 2008 to $48 in 2014.
• North American concert ticket sales grew 22 percent since last year, fueling a rapidly growing industry now estimated at $6.2 billion.
• Music lovers often don’t know their favorite musician is in town. 40 percent of live event tickets go unsold, primarily due to lack of awareness.