The highs and lows of veteran and battle scarred music festival Big Day Out has been closely followed by the Australian music industry and fans alike.
The festival was officially put on ice for 2015, after the bombshell that co-promoter AJ Maddah had sold his stake in the iconic Aussie festival, pulling out of his partnership with American co-owners C3 Presents, making the Texan festival presenters of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits the sole owners of Big Day Out.
Maddah had previously admitted that 2014’s Big Day Out had suffered “ugly” financial losses and low ticket sales with reports circulating the struggling festival was facing losses of between $8 to $15 million from lax attendance figures.
Now C3 Presents, who first bought into the festival in 2010 after founder Viv Lees walked away following poor ticket sales, may be about to be gobbled up itself, with concert and ticketing giant Live Nation Entertainment in advanced talks to buy a majority stake in the company.
According to the New York Times, the deal has been in negotiation for months and has not been completed yet, how it would see Live Nation purchase a 51 percent stake in C3. The acquisition would value C3, the largest independent US promoter, at a cool $250 million.
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Last year, C3 sold 2,025,002 tickets to its events, according to the concert industry trade publication Pollstar, with gross sales of at least $124 million. The company, which in addition to Big Day Out and their US festival properties also controls concert venues in Austin and books performances at casinos around the country, is said to have earnings of about $20 million a year.
C3 has deep ties with Live Nation. It books concerts for the company’s House of Blues chain, and Charlie Walker, one of C3’s three owners, is a former Live Nation executive.
The other owners of C3 are Charles Attal and Charlie Jones. Among the company’s investors are the Raine Group, a private equity fund, and Coran Capshaw, manager of the Dave Matthews Band.
It remains unclear what effect the acquisition would have on the local operations of Big Day Out. Live Nation already has a presence in Australia, after they purchased Michael Coppel Presents in 2012.
