US investment firm Silver Lake Partners has signed a definitive agreement to acquire TEG, the Australian and Asian Pacific concert promoter and ticketing giant from funds advised by Affinity Equity Partners. TEG’s senior management team, including CEO Geoff Jones, will continue to run the company and remain equity partners.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed and is expected to close later this year.
Silver Lake is already a major player in music and entertainment after significant investments in Irving Azoff led Oakview Group, media company and booking agency Endeavor, movie theater chain AEG and the Madison Square Garden Group.
TEG is 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 including Hugh Jackman, Guns N’ Roses, Eminem, Katy Perry, Cirque du Soleil, Jerry Seinfeld, the Brazil national football team and Intel Extreme Masters esports.
“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,” said Geoff Jones, CEO of TEG. “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.”
“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,” said Stephen Evans, Managing Director at Silver Lake. “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.”
TEG was advised on this transaction by Goldman Sachs and King & Wood Mallesons. Silver Lake was advised by Latham & Watkins and Corrs Chambers Westgarth.