Expanding its reach, international company Piletilevi Group, that bought a majority stake in Bilete.ro in summer 2023 , is emerging as the biggest player in Central Europe
Piletilevi Group is buying a majority stake in two Polish ticket sales companies – kicket and Biletomat – which become after the merger the second largest ticket sales company on the Polish market as well as the largest player in Central Europe, brokering tickets for nearly 320 million euros per year.
According to Sven Nuutmann, co-owner and CEO of Piletilevi Group, Piletilevi Group is buying kicket.com and Biletomat.pl, which are well-known players on the Polish market. “With this transaction, Piletilevi Group now owns a 77 percent stake in the companies being purchased, which will increase to 83.8 percent by 2026,” Nuutmann said.
According to him, the largest investment in Piletilevi Group’s history will give the opportunity for the merged Company in Poland to become the market leader in the near future. „We now face the task of effectively connecting the companies that are being purchased and our existing company GoOut Poland, so that the best functionalities of Piletilevi Group and the new partners reach all our customers as quickly as possible,” Nuutmann said.
He added that the emergence of a ticket brokering company with strong market power on the Polish market will give the organizers financial security, supplement competition and offer a more diverse selection of cultural events to a larger audience. “A ticketing system that has uniform standards and is connected across countries will significantly improve international cultural exchange,” Nuutmann said, adding that the conditions offered to event organizers so far will remain valid even after the merger of the companies.
According to Nuutmann, the technological level of the sales platform of the Polish companies being purchased is very good and will also speed up the completion of the new platform of Piletilevi Group, in which the company has invested nearly six million euros. Piletilevi’s new platform will be completed in the first half of 2025.
According to Maciej Wartacz, kicket’s CEO and Konrad Kubaczewski, Biletomat’s CEO, managers of the Polish companies that joined Piletilevi, the partnership with Piletilevi Group, which has become the largest player in Central Europe, will ensure the continued development of the companies and provide the opportunity to offer event organizers even more effective support in event marketing and ticket sales. “We know each other with Konrad for more than 6 years and it was always our mutual intention to merge and consolidate the industry in Poland. Thanks to Piletilevi Group and BaltCap private equity fund, we can finally make it happen and become the second largest ticketing company in Poland, a market worth more than 1 billion euro in tickets sold per year”, Wartacz said.
The transaction was signed in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, on Tuesday and entered into force immediately upon signing. The transaction was co-financed by SEB Bank. “Supporting local companies in their international expansion is one of our ambitions, and we are very happy to be a partner of the Piletilevi Group on this journey. The development of the service-based companies have been very fast and competitive, thus it is impressive to see how professionally Piletilevi has managed to grow, expand it reach and establish market leader position in the region,” comment Peep Jalakas, member of the board of SEB.
Piletilevi Group, the largest ticketing environment in the Baltic states, started expanding vigorously in Central Europe in summer 2023, when it first bought a majority stake in one of the largest ticketing companies in Romania, Bilete.ro, and then also in the Czech market leader GoOut.net.
Bilete.ro has been operating on the Romanian market for 18 years, selling over 2 million tickets per year. The main areas served are cultural events, sports, concerts and festivals, children’s entertainment and theatre.
„Our ambitions are not limited to this and we have at present started preparations to acquire companies in two more countries,” Nuutmann said.
According to him, Piletilevi, which has become the biggest player in Central Europe, has been noticed and several cooperation proposals are received from different countries every month. „We choose partners very carefully and make sure that our values and future vision coincide with those of our fellow shareholders,” Nuutmann said.
The Piletilevi Group, owned by entrepreneur Sven Nuutmann’s investment company EastCom Capital and BaltCap, the largest private equity investor in the Baltics, is an international ticket sales and event organization company that operates in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. The company celebrated its 27th successful year of operation this year.
PiIetilevi Group operates in a market with a population of 79 million people. The volume of brokered tickets has grown to 17 million tickets with a total value of 320 million euros and the annual volume of visits to all websites is growing to 116 million per year. Piletilevi Group employs nearly 250 people.
