Superstruct Entertainment acquired by KKR & CVC

KKR acquired Superstruct Entertainment in a transaction announced in June 2024 and completed on 28 October 2024, at a reported enterprise value of €1–10bn, with CVC Capital Partners investing alongside for 22% of the capital at closing. Founded in 2017 and based in London, Superstruct Entertainment owns and operates more than eighty music festivals across ten countries in Europe and Australia, among them Wacken Open Air, Sónar, Defqon.1, Parookaville and Zwarte Cross. Each event retains its own name and programming team, while the group supplies ticketing, the booking of artists across its portfolio, the procurement of staging and the sale of sponsorship. Attendance reached 6.6 million in 2025, when revenue amounted to €450–900M with an EBITDA of €50–100M, an EV/EBITDA multiple of 10x–18x. Assembling festivals under common ownership is intended to reduce the cost of staging each of them, since staging, sound, security and temporary infrastructure are bought once for many events rather than separately for each, and an artist can be booked across several dates in a single negotiation. The 2025 accounts, the first full year under the new ownership, showed that effect had yet to materialise. Revenue rose 4.4% from 790 million euros, while cost of sales increased 15% and administrative expenses 50%, producing a loss after tax of 115.5 million euros against 90.6 million the previous year. Borrowings rose by 109 million to 392.5 million, and the group ended the year with net liabilities of 153.1 million against net assets a year earlier. Two of the portfolio’s founding events moved in the opposite direction over the same period, Sziget returning to its founder in November 2025, eight years after the group acquired 70% of it as its first major purchase, and Sónar’s three founders departing in October 2025 after more than thirty years. Boiler Room was acquired from DICE during 2025. Several artists withdrew from the group’s festivals during 2025 in protest at the investments of its owners. The company did not attribute its wider losses to those withdrawals and gave no figure for their effect.