Eventbrite Received $17M Discount on Ticketfly Purchase as Part of Renegotiated Deal With Pandora

A first earnings report shows the company actually paid $184M for Ticketfly, down from $201M.

Eventbrite got a $17 million discount on Ticketfly, Billboard has learned, reaching an agreement with Pandora to settle a promissory note that dropped the price of the ticketing company by about eight percent.

In total, Eventbrite paid $184 million for Ticketfly after originally agreeing to pay $201 million in September 2017. The deal was financed with $151 million in cash and a $50 million promissory note with a five-year maturity and an interest rate of 6.5 percent. Last week, it was revealed that Eventbrite and Pandora renegotiated the loan in March, with Eventbrite agreeing to settle the note in full for $34.7 million, representing $33 million in principal and $1.7 million of accrued interest.

The $184 million price tag represents a 46 percent drop from the $335 million that Pandora paid for Ticketfly in October 2015. That deal was originally valued at $450 million, but a steep drop in Pandora’s share price after the deal was announced cut the value of the transaction down by about 25 percent.

The disclosure came in Eventbrite’s first quarterly earnings report since going public earlier year. Eventbrite reported a net loss of $35.6 million, or $1.24 a share, on sales of $73.6 million, up from $50.7 million a year ago. The bulk of Eventbrite’s losses were a result of stock-based compensation, and shares dipped about five percent to close at $30, which is still significantly higher than the company’s IPO price of $23 per share.

The report also showed that Eventbrite has received more than $5.9 million in insurance proceeds connected to a hack attack from June, when an unknown individual breached the company’s security and stole personal consumer data from the site and resulted in Ticketfly going offline for several days.

"As of September 30, 2018, the company had a remaining liability balance of $0.7 million related to future accommodation payments and a $2.0 million receivable for insurance proceeds,” the SEC report explains.

The company is now facing a class action lawsuit as a result of the breach. Last month Eventbrite officials announced they were sunsetting the Ticketfly brand and replacing it with Eventbrite Music. Since the acquisition was announced last year, dozens of Ticketfly employees have either left the company or been let go.