Booming Beats, Quiet Transitions: The Impact of Private Equity on Europe’s Festival Landscape

As summer arrives in Europe, millions of people across the continent are preparing to head to their favourite music festivals. 

But few of those looking forward to carefree days in the sun will know about the cold hard cash behind events such as Sziget in Hungary, Sónar in Spain, and Field Day in the UK.

Last year the U.S.-based private equity firm KKR, whose leadership has links to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, bought up all of these and around 80 other popular festivals in Europe and Australia, in a deal worth 1.3 billion euros. 

The buy-out has raised concerns about potential hikes to ticket prices, as well as conflicts between the inclusive values of many such festivals and the ruthlessly profit-driven equity firm that now owns them. 

Like other private equity firms, KKR raises money from wealthy families and institutional investors, such as pension funds, and uses it to buy companies. 

It tries to grow a business over the course of about five years and make it more profitable. It then resells a company, if possible at a hefty profit for the fund. 

Critics have dubbed such funds “predators” and “vultures” because of the varied tactics they use to monetise the businesses that come under their control. 

Private equity firms frequently chop up and sell real estate, overload companies with debt and make mass layoffs. These measures can drive even long established businesses into the ground, as KRR did with the likes of Toys ‘R’ Us, and the Dutch department store chain V&D.

Steven, a 36-year-old festival goer from the Netherlands, shuddered when he learned that KRR was now the owner of scores of music festivals. Memories of what the group had done to V&D were still fresh in his mind.

“Then a ticket will soon cost 400 euros,” he worried, “just like in the U.S.”

Gaza

KRR came to own the festivals when, along with its UK industry peer CVC, it bought out Superstruct Entertainment. 

Superstruct, a British- and Luxembourg-based group, has existed since 2017 and has in recent years been buying up festivals across Europe at breakneck speed.

It now operates dozens of events, mainly in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, which collectively attract 7 million visitors a year. 

Few noticed private equity’s advance into the festival world until the start of this year when Superstruct, by then owned by KRR, acquired the UK-based Boiler Room.

Boiler Room – which organises parties and festivals, and broadcasts on YouTube – has long expressed public solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

But KKR also invests in Israeli data centres and tech companies, as well as defence firms elsewhere.

“[Such investments] categorically do not align with our values,” Boiler Room’s management said on Instagram in a bid to publicly distance themselves from the new ownership, adding that they had been powerless to stop the takeover.

That distancing did not prevent artists from cancelling performances anyway. 

British DJ Ikonika pulled out not just because of the plight of the Palestinian people but also because of a polluting natural gas pipeline in Canada in which KKR invests.

Field Day, a festival scheduled to take place in London on 24 May, has been hit even harder. On Wednesday, fifteen artists cancelled their performances. Earlier, some 200 artists had called on the organisers of Field Day to publicly distance themselves from their owner, but they did not do so.

“[Such investments] categorically do not align with our values” 

Barcelona’s Sónar festival is also facing cancellations, such as that of the Netherlands-based Animistic Beliefs.

The duo cancelled in solidarity with Palestinians, and because of KKR’s profiting from “war, climate destruction, and systems of oppression”. 

The group added in a social media post: “We know no space is free from contradiction. But somewhere, the line has to be drawn”.

In apparent response to the cancellations, Sónar said that it “strongly condemns all forms of violence”. Field Day stated that it could not do anything about their new owner.

Milkshake in Amsterdam and  Mighty Hoopla in London both announced on Friday that they were expressing their disapproval of KKR’s “unethical investments”.

Superstruct and KKR declined to comment for this article.

Vision and Mission

The driving force behind Superstruct is James Barton, 56, founder of the UK dance festival Creamfields and former “president of electronic music” at concert and festival organiser Live Nation.

In 2017, Barton launched Superstruct with backing from U.S.-based Providence Equity Partners. Its parent company was incorporated in Luxembourg for tax purposes.

From the outset, Superstruct was designed to grow aggressively through acquisitions. 

In just six years, Barton built it into Europe’s second-largest festival operator, behind Live Nation. The company didn’t just buy festivals, it also acquired businesses along the supply chain: travel agencies, advertising firms, artist management companies, and even a stage construction workshop in the Netherlands.

Superstruct’s rapid rise went largely unnoticed by the press. That was intentional, Barton later suggested. 

“We knew that we needed to move in such a way to try and generate enough scale before people really woke up to the fact that an organisation out there…had a really strong vision and a mission,” he said in a rare interview in February.

Other investors followed suit. Dutch private equity firm Waterland formed a competing group, All Things Live, by acquiring several Scandinavian event companies in 2018. The company has since expanded rapidly across Europe.

The pandemic hit the festival industry hard. 

Margins were already slim, and costs – especially for artists, security, materials, and energy – soared. 

“Young people don’t have endless budgets. You can’t pass everything on through ticket prices,” said one festival founder now under Superstruct’s umbrella. “If Superstruct hadn’t stepped in, some of these festivals wouldn’t have survived.”

Superstruct continued its expansion during this volatile period. In 2021, it absorbed Zwarte Cross – the largest paid festival in the Netherlands – followed by Dutch dance music giant ID&T and later, Amsterdam’s DGTL festival.

“Many festivals are run on passion, but hit operational limits”

Meanwhile, All Things Live was also on the move. In 2022, it acquired Amsterdam-based concert organiser Agents After All, and in 2023, Loveland. The group also expanded into Belgium, Italy, and even Dubai.

Waterland spokesperson Laurence Van Doosselaere argued that private equity is stepping in not just for profit, but to stabilise a fragmented industry. 

“Many festivals are run on passion, but hit operational limits,” she said. “We see our role as providing structure and support. If done right, it can actually enhance the visitor experience.”

‘Sustainability, diversity’

The rush to buy up festivals fits into a broader private equity trend: investing in experiences rather than physical goods.

“Demand for live entertainment has grown significantly over the past decade and is expected to continue to expand, as consumer spending continues to shift from goods towards experience,” KKR stated in one investor presentation.

It’s therefore not hard to see why capital is flowing into  Formula 1,  casinos, river cruises or wellness centres – and now music festivals. Even investments in theatrical musicals or virtual ABBA experiences fall under this umbrella of experience-driven consumption.

Yet many festivals pride themselves on being more than just entertainment. They often present themselves as community-minded or even subversive spaces for counterculture, inclusion, and activism.

DGTL in Amsterdam, for example, links its values to the queer and underground roots of house and disco. 

“Inclusivity is at the heart of what we do – welcoming every gender, sexual orientation, background, and identity,” according to the festival’s website. 

Danish festival Tinderbox promotes “sustainability, diversity, [and local] traditions” as its core values. Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival brands its egalitarian ticket policy as “metal socialism,” rejecting VIP tiers and keeping prices low.

“House and techno emerged as art, as expression. Now that culture is being turned into shallow entertainment.”

This identity-driven approach can clash with the perceived values of firms like KKR, whose leadership includes prominent figures aligned with the Republican Party, which is sceptical of progressive concepts like diversity and sustainability.

That tension is especially stark for artists and communities that see electronic music as more than a business. 

“House and techno emerged as art, as expression,” said Serge Verschuur, founder of Clone Records in the Netherlands, a respected hub for dance music. “Now that culture is being turned into shallow entertainment. The original meaning is being hollowed out.”

Verschuur said many still view festivals like Sónar or Boiler Room as underground and edgy, when in fact they’re now run like any other corporate venture. “The image of these events as grassroots is still being exploited for profit.”

Private equity firms argue otherwise. “This outdated view of private equity doesn’t reflect reality,” said Waterland’s Van Doosselaere. “Yes, festivals are born from community and culture. Our job is to ensure those communities can continue creating. We bring infrastructure and organisational muscle. They bring the soul.”

Ticket Prices

So how does KKR plan to make its investment back? 

“I think they’re starting to ask themselves that too. There’s already unrest at the top of the company,” said a former festival executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not allowed to speak to the press. They pointed to the appointment of a new CEO at Superstruct two weeks ago.

The 1.3 billion deal price is reportedly 13 times Superstruct’s gross annual earnings. The piece was pushed up by other other interested parties, including BlackRock, Condé Nast’s parent company Advance Publications, and private equity firm EQT.

For KKR to hit its return targets within five or six years, according to a Reuters analysis, gross profit will have to increase by tens of percent annually. That likely means higher ticket prices and tighter cost control.

Economies of scale may help. KKR and CVC can centralise operations like catering or ticketing, thereby cutting costs. 

They can also mine data – from Spotify, TikTok, and elsewhere – to tailor lineups more precisely to audience demand, potentially boosting sales and prices.

Still, some insiders are sceptical. “There are a few gems, such as Wacken, Zwarte Cross, Defqon.1 and Parookaville, but for most of those eighty festivals, the margins are thin … That’s why so many struggled during COVID. Those were exactly the festivals private equity bought up,” said the former executive. “So where are all these profits supposed to come from?”

The likeliest answer, many say, is more commercial partnerships and higher ticket prices.

Superstruct’s website, for instance, doesn’t showcase music – it features glossy case studies of brand activations with corporate sponsors. 

“It’s more B2B [business to business] than music,” the former executive noted.

Advertising is one lever. Another is content. Festivals now generate video assets – concerts, DJ sets, behind-the-scenes moments – that can be monetised via YouTube and other social media.

Some industry players are cautious. 

“You can’t just keep raising prices or bombard people with ads, because they’ll stop coming,” said Pepijn ten Kate of the Kunstenbond/Ntb union in the Netherlands. 

“And major artists aren’t going to charge less. That pressure will fall on collaborators and emerging talent.”