CTS Eventim AG & Co. KGaA

CTS Eventim AG & Co. KGaA

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Nov 19Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 26, 2026

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CTS Eventim AG & Co. KGaA annual financial report 2025.

At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentations.

Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. William Willms.

William Willms

Good evening, everybody, and a very good morning to all of you dialing in today from the US. Welcome to CTS Eventim's earnings call for the full year 2025.

Thank you very much for joining in today's call. I'm William Willms, the new chief financial officer of CTS Eventim since Jan 2026, and I'm delighted to take you through our results, but also our strategic priorities today.

From our side is further on this call Marco Haeckermann, our head of investor relations and business development. Marco.

Marco Haeckermann

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining.

William Willms

For today's agenda, I will guide you through our promising full year 2025 results, but also our strategic priorities for 2026 and beyond, and provide you with our guidance for 2026 and our new approach towards capital market communication. I look forward to the discussion with you on our 2025 results and 2026 guidance, and will be happy to open the floor for your questions at the end of the earnings presentation.

Let's begin. Let me start with a detailed look at our 2025 full year outturn and achievements.

Before I, however, turn to a more detailed review, I would like to set the stage for today's call. 2025 has been a year of continued momentum for Eventim, a year in which we crossed for the first time in our history the €3 billion revenue threshold and further consolidated our position as Europe's leading live entertainment and ticketing platform.

At the same time, we achieved an adjusted EBITDA of €584 million, demonstrating not only strong top-line growth, but also our solid operational execution and profitability. Looking at our operational scale, we marketed more than 1 million events in 2025 in more than 30 countries worldwide.

In terms of reach, our ecosystem generated approximately 7.6 billion digital touchpoints, highlighting the scale of our customer interactions and the increasing importance of digital channels across the customer journey. Last but not least, we now have more than 260 million user profiles, giving us direct access to a large and highly valuable customer base.

This is a key strategic asset of ours, enabling personalization, improving engagement, and supporting monetization across our platform. I would like to follow with two slides on operational and strategic highlights.

2025 reflected strong operational execution across both Ticketing and Live Entertainment. Let me provide you with some highlights.

We delivered major tour successes with international superstars like Ed Sheeran, reaching over 1 million fans and generating around €100 million in revenue. Besides Ed Sheeran, AC/DC and Apache 207, one of the German superstars, were further highlights in 2025.

Our flagship festivals, including Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, achieved record attendance of around 180,000 fans and strong digital engagement. Rock am Ring celebrated its 40th anniversary, and Rock im Park its 30th anniversary.

Furthermore, last year saw editions of many unique festivals from the Eventim portfolio, such as Hurricane, Highfield, Garorock, and many more. In mega-events ticketing, the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games launch saw very strong demand, with over 1.5 million registrations within the first 24 hours.

This project marks the latest success story in our history with the IOC, who has been entrusting us with the sixth Olympic project since 2006. Finally, our venue business also performed strongly.

While I will later zoom in on venues in more detail, and the new arena in Milan in particular, LANXESS arena in Cologne had again a very successful year, hosting more than 200 shows and welcoming over 2.5 million visitors, further reinforcing its leading position in Europe. It ranks number three of all European venues in the latest Pollstar ranking.

Next, some of our strategic achievements. 2025 was also a year of strategic progress, strengthening our global capabilities and investing in technology to support sustainable growth and margin expansion.

Let me give you and provide you with some examples. We initiated the build-up of global functions with the Eventim Media House as a first proof point.

With highly engaged fans, millions of daily visitors on our marketplaces, and a vast base of registered users, we will leverage this rich data pool to deliver innovative media solutions to our global promoter clients and unlock new revenue streams with end customers, the fans. The Eventim Media House develops new creative marketing assets globally, strengthened social media campaigns, as well as new brand partnerships.

With this, we will evolve the Eventim brand from a trusted market leader into a global discovery brand. At the same time, we established the foundation for a unified, modular global platform, which will enable greater standardization and scalability, improve the fan experience, and increase both innovation velocity and operational success.

We also accelerated our investments in data and AI, rolling out enterprise-wide capabilities and building a global data platform, which we expect to materially enhance decision-making and deliver double-digit returns over time. While the use of AI will increase development speed and quality, our global data platform will further enable the flexible creation of new data-driven products.

This data platform will further optimize operations and increase monetization as an integral part of our future growth profile. Positive financial impact is expected over the midterm.

Finally, as a global ticketing provider, we leverage mega-events like the Olympics not only to drive innovation, but also to prove the performance of new developments in the most demanding, high-scale environments, such as Milano Cortina or the LA28 Olympic Games. I hope this gave you some helpful context for our 2025 results.

Let me now continue with a detailed review of our full year '25 financial performance and the respective segment drill-down. In 2025, we delivered a strong set of results and achieved all of our guidance targets, not only at group level, but also across both our segments, Ticketing and Live Entertainment.

Starting with group revenue, we grew by around 10% year-on-year to €3.1 billion. At the same time, adjusted EBITDA increased by 8% to €584 million, and EBIT also grew by 8% to €477 million.

Beyond the financials, the underlying fundamentals remain strong, too. For example, our fee-bearing retail ticket volume increased by 21% to nearly 178 million tickets, highlighting strong consumer demand and continued traction across the platform.

This development was further supported by the full-year consolidation of our recent acquisitions, France Billet and See Tickets. This strong operational momentum is also reflected in our gross transaction value, which reached nearly €9 billion, underlining the scale and activity in our ecosystem.

Earnings per share, however, declined, despite all strong operational performance, by 13% to €2.89, driven by external factors, mainly FX effects due to a strong euro against the weaker US dollar. I will explain this later in more detail when we talk about our financial and net results.

Let us take a quick look at group level. Over the past years, as mentioned, Eventim has consistently delivered strong growth combined with high profitability.

As said, in 2025, we exceeded the €3 billion mark in revenues for the first time. However, this is not just a one-off achievement.

It is the result of a long-term growth trajectory. Looking back, it took the company around 17 years from IPO to reach €1 billion in annual revenues.

From there, it took only about four additional years to reach €2 billion, excluding the COVID period. Most recently, it took just two more years to surpass the €3 billion mark.

Most importantly, however, this growth is broad-based. It is driven by both segments, Ticketing and Live Entertainment, and across all regions.

This strong growth trajectory, however, did not dilute our strong margin levels. Our adjusted EBITDA margin remains at around 19%, in line with the high levels of previous years.

Looking at EBITDA more closely, growth is supported in particular by strong contributions from the Ticketing segment, both organically and through acquisitions, translated into EBIT. Let's have a quick look at quarter four.

2025 was again supported by a strong third quarter and, in particular, a very strong fourth quarter, which is seasonally still the most important period for Eventim. In Q4, we delivered revenues of €931 million, representing a significant increase compared to the previous quarter and highlighting the strong year-end demand across our business.

This growth was again supported by both segments. The strong top-line development is translated into profitability.

Adjusted EBITDA in quarter four increased by 12% year-on-year to €246 million, reflecting not only higher volumes, but also the operating leverage in our model. More broadly, this also underlines the strong momentum in the second half of the year, where both revenue and earnings accelerated compared to the first half.

Let me now turn to a drill-down into our two segments, starting with our Ticketing segment. In 2025, Ticketing delivered a consistently strong performance across all quarters, with each quarter outperforming the respective prior-year period.

A key contributor to this development was the full-year consolidation of France Billet and See Tickets, which for the first time accounted for all quarters. These acquisitions not only added volume, but also strengthened our regional footprint and international presence.

We aim to scale the traditionally lower-scale margin business of See Tickets to higher levels with our tech and product excellence and existing reach. Our broad and well-diversified partner network ensures a strong and reliable supply of events, both through our own promoters or through long-standing relationships with third-party promoters.

With See Tickets now being part of the group, we are now able to offer an even wider range of ticketing solutions to our B2B partners, either by offering the Eventim retail platform and the ability to profit from our huge customer database, as presented earlier, or by providing more or less serviced ticketing solutions and the partner business and SaaS ticketing. The operational foundation for the just described financial development is a strong and consistent growth in retail ticket volumes, reaching 177 million tickets in 2025, which corresponds to a CAGR of around 29% since 2023.

Again, this growth is broad-based across all regions. A key contributor to this development has been the expansion of our international footprint, particularly through the integration of France Billet and See Tickets.

As a result, the regional mix of our business continues to evolve. Today, around two-thirds of our retail ticket volumes are generated outside Germany, as illustrated on the right-hand side of the slide.

This increasing international diversification is strategically important. By spreading our business across a broader set of markets, we are becoming more resilient to local economic volatility, while at the same time reducing dependency on individual on-sales or specific events.

At the same time, this broader footprint allows us to capture growth opportunities across multiple regions, further supporting the scalability of our model. Let me now turn to our second segment, Live Entertainment.

Again, record results. For the first time, Live Entertainment exceeded €2 billion in annual revenues.

With more than €2 billion revenues in a broad portfolio of events, we have built a well-diversified and balanced promotion business. As the scale of the business increases, the dependency on single artists or tours becomes significantly smaller.

This is also reflected in the seasonal profile shown on the slide. From a profitability perspective, we were able to cover first-half year effects by strong momentum in the second half, with EBITDA growth supported in particular by our own venues business and the continued development of our US activities.

Altogether, we were able to maintain the EBITDA margin in Live Entertainment above 6% for now three consecutive years. Within the Live Entertainment segment, venues gain more importance in our business model.

With assets such as the LANXESS arena in Cologne, a number of midsized venues, open-air theaters, and the Milan arena, we will further expand this footprint and enhance the Live Entertainment value chain. This is already visible in the numbers today.

Our venue operations contribute roughly 40% to the Live Entertainment segment EBITDA, making it a key earnings driver. The profitability with approximately 46% adjusted EBITDA margin is comparable to our Ticketing business.

I will provide you with more details on our financial strategy and overall approach with respect to venues later in this presentation when I talk about our strategy and the next chapters. Let me conclude the financial chapter with the financial result.

As you have seen, our adjusted EBITDA, the key indicator of our operational performance, increased by around €42 million year-on-year. However, when moving further down the P&L, we see a notable swing in the financial result.

In 2025, the financial result is approximately €100 million lower than previous year, driven by, one, around 50% of the decline is related to negative foreign exchange effects as well as lower interest rate income; two, a further 30% relates to 2024 effects non-recurring in 2025, most notably a dividend contribution from the cartel project; and three, the remaining 20% is driven by valuation effects linked to option valuations. The increase in operating performance is therefore offset by the weaker financial result, leading to a net result of €277 million and earnings per share of €2.89.

In the following, I would like to highlight our strategic priorities for 2026 and beyond. Let me start on a very high level.

We define ourselves as the European integrated live entertainment business, a European-centric integrated live entertainment business. While preserving this strength, we have global ambitions.

Our business idea is based on the three main business pillars: Ticketing, Events, and Venues, both integrated and open to third parties. First, Ticketing: We operate the largest ticketing platform in Europe, serving both the content side, i.e., promoters and artists, and a highly engaged fan base.

Beyond ticket sales, this also creates meaningful monetization opportunities through data, personalization, and ancillary services, while helping drive revenues for our partners. The second pillar is Events: Here, our own and third-party event network creates a broad and relevant inventory base that continuously fuels the ticketing platform.

At the same time, the breadth of our event portfolio attracts more customers to our ecosystem, increasing frequency, engagement, and demand. Therefore, events are the key traffic engine for broadening the platform.

Being highly attractive for third parties, around 20% of the ticketing revenue is generated from group promoter content. Combined with our venue footprint, this allows us to support the value chain more vertically when providing full-service event organization and deepening relationships with artists and promoters.

Just as importantly, events in our own venues feed directly back into the ticketing engine. This further improves quality, supply, and execution, while also creating a more differentiated offering for customers and partners.

All three pillars are therefore intended to be mutually reinforcing. Ticketing drives audience reach and demand.

Events generate relevant inventory and customer engagement. Venues provide supply, execution, and capability.

This integrated model directly translates into a number of structural strengths that set us apart, some of which we highlighted on the right-hand side of this chart. What I just described can be summarized as a fully integrated ecosystem with strong flywheel dynamics, creating a value loop.

Promoters provide the inventory. Venues create fan experiences and go-to places for artists.

We use the generated data to drive engagement, reactivation, and personalization, which improves customer experience and conversion, and in turn generates more data and better monetization opportunities. Generated insights help promoters and venues to market content more effectively and improve sell-through.

Ticketing acts as the marketplace and catalyst that connects the ecosystem. We will continue to invest in this model through strategic growth initiatives and selective acquisitions.

We consider a disciplined capital allocation aimed at reinforcing ecosystem dynamics and extending our long-term growth trajectory as essential, creating more value over the entire ecosystem. Having given this context, what are now our priorities for 2026 and beyond?

We will continue strengthening our market leadership position in Ticketing and Live Entertainment in Europe, while accelerating our expansion in the Americas, where we see significant growth potential. We will enhance our platform capabilities.

By leveraging AI-driven personalization and driving higher-margin ancillary revenues, we aim to increase customer lifetime value, while continuing to invest in the robustness and scalability of our technology. At the same time, we will optimize and grow our live portfolio.

We plan to further expand our venue business and expand into artist management, while preserving our asset-light model. Operational excellence remains a key enabler across all of this.

We are driving further standardization and scalability across the organization to support profitable growth. Last but not least, we plan to continue selective inorganic growth opportunities.

Our focus here is on acquisitions in high-growth opportunities, where we can quickly deliver returns and realize synergies within our ecosystem. Overall, these priorities will create a bridge between our near-term execution and our long-term 2030 ambition.

Allow me to provide you with some more insight and a short deep dive in our approach towards venues as part of our ecosystem. As I know, this has raised many questions last year.

First, where will we invest? We focus on structurally attractive regions in Europe, followed by selected market opportunities in North and South America.

Doing this, we target underserved metropolitan areas. Second, and how we select opportunities: Every venue must have a strategic fit within our ecosystem.

Thirdly, all of this will be done, as I said before, while preserving our asset-light approach. We are currently working on a financial, respectively, commercial structure enabling us to take existing and potential future venue assets off balance sheet.

As you all know, such structures are highly complex and take some time due to this complexity. Please bear with us, with me, on this matter.

To put, however, some more flesh to our venue strategy, allow me to give you some insight on the Unipol Forum in Milan. After approximately 2.5 years of construction, the arena successfully opened earlier this year.

With the first event taking place on February 5th, the Unipol Forum hosted the ice hockey matches for the Olympic Winter Games earlier this year. This venue represents the most modern, large-scale arena in Italy and ranks among the most advanced and sustainable venues in Europe.

The arena sets new standards, particularly in VIP and hospitality offerings, as well as in state-of-the-art technical infrastructure for live events. Its distinctive design, including the LED facade, establishes a true landmark in Europe and creates attractive long-term sponsorship potential, including Unipol insurance to be the official naming rights partner.

We plan to host around 50 shows this year only, with an average ticket price approximately 10% higher than originally underwritten. Finally, let's have a look at our 2026 guidance and our new capital market communication approach.

Eventim profits from strong and unbroken demand for live entertainment. In an increasingly digital world, fans like to get together, celebrating unique live experiences.

Eventim will stay a growth asset for the years to come, even though our 2026 budget needs to compensate for a one-time effect in form of a structural income change from a long-term contract. We have set ourselves ambitious midterm targets in both our segments and on group level.

We, however, carefully watch the current geopolitical situation. Rising uncertainties might have an impact on disposable consumer income and discretionary spending, and thus might impact us indirectly.

Everything else being equal, we expect a structural bottom-line growth for the midterm, in line with past performance, backed by a strong set of growth and margin measures. While we are planning slightly more conservatively for 2026, it is also possible to reach historical performance levels with these measures gaining traction.

With this in mind, we guide for 2026: In Ticketing, we expect all KPIs on previous year level, respectively, slightly higher. In Live Entertainment, we expect moderate growth in adjusted EBITDA and EBIT, whereas the revenues are expected to reach prior-year level.

Finally, we expect Eventim Group level KPIs on or slightly higher level than previous year. CTS Eventim has a consistent track record of returning value to its shareholders.

In total, we provided to our shareholders since 2006 €1 billion in dividends. Since 2014, dividend payments have grown from €38 million to €138 million in 2025.

This reflects a long-term dividend per share CAGR of 17.4%. We plan to continue our dividend policy of a targeted payout of 50% net income.

Hence, management board, respectively, the supervisory board is planning to propose to the AGM in May 2026 a dividend per share of €1.44. Being on board now for nearly three months, what are my observations, and what are my priorities and focus areas for the year to come?

Five focus areas: One, fundamental value creation steering: Value creation focus beyond EBITDA or short-term payback metrics, anchored in a holistic shareholder value-oriented steering. We will follow a framework KPIs, including cash flow generation, capital allocation, and a clear prioritization logic.

Two, I will explain this in a minute in more detail, an internal excellence program: A structured initiative to enhance operational performance and global competitiveness. Three, the preservance of our asset-light model: Expanding and preserving this asset-light model to increase flexibility and capital efficiency.

We will retain the operator role in venues to protect brand, returns, and ecosystem synergy, while having the venue itself off balance sheet. Four, the fourth focus area, investor relations: I plan to further enhance investor interaction and engagement through proactive communication, with increased transparency on strategy and performance in capital markets events to strengthen trust.

Last but not least, M&A and M&A strategy: We will pursue value-accretive M&A, aligned with strategic priorities and clear synergy cases. We have strict financial hurdles, rigorous due diligence, and PMI to ensure sustainable value creation and capital discipline.

As mentioned before and indicated, to make everything happen what I just outlined, we will implement a comprehensive operating excellence program to translate strategic priorities into measurable execution. This program brings together our key value creation levers across commercial excellence, tech and product excellence, process excellence into one structured framework.

All initiatives will feed into our midterm full potential plan. Such programmatic approach will enable transparency, accountability, and execution discipline for all initiatives across the entire organization.

The to-be-developed full plan will refine our midterm ambition targets and is intended to propel the company tech-wise, commercially, and financially to the next level. Last but not least, this call is intended to mark a new chapter in our capital market communication.

We are, and especially me, we are excited to announce our first-ever Capital Markets Day at the Unipol Forum in Milan taking place in September this year. Hosting it at the Unipol Forum in Milan, the intersection of our venue strategy, will simultaneously give you a firsthand experience of what world-class venue operations look like.

During the Capital Markets Day, we will provide you with more details on our strategy, midterm strategic full potential plan, and our excellence program. We will share the exact date in due course, as we would like to combine this with a very special event at the Forum.

We are already today looking very much forward to welcoming all of you in Milan. Thank you very much for your attention.

I hope this was helpful and insightful. Operator, let's jump into Q&A, and please, let's open the line now.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press 9 and the star key on your telephone keypad.

If you would like to cancel your question, please press 3 and the star key again. Please press 9 and star if you would like to ask a question.

I repeat it again. If you would like to ask a question, please press 9 and the star key on your telephone keypad.

If you would like to cancel your question, please press 3 and the star key. Please press 9 and star key if you would like to ask a question now.

The first question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein. The floor is yours.

Annick Maas

Good evening. I have a few questions, and I don't see the slide, maybe this is on the slide, excuse me if I'm asking it and it's displayed there.

The first one is on the outlook. I think just to confirm that you said ticketing revenues and adjusted EBITDA are going to be on the previous year level in 2026.

In Live Entertainment, you said moderate growth in adjusted EBITDA, and just to confirm that moderate growth is still 5% to 15%, which is the number that you used to quote in the past, and revenues would be in line with the prior year. That's my first question on the outlook.

The second one is Live Entertainment was quite strong in the fourth quarter. In the annual report, you're talking about the good lineup coming up.

I just would like to understand, is there already any naming rights proceeds in the fourth quarter numbers of Live Entertainment or not? Then if you could give us just an indication in terms of the first quarter, particularly given reported comps are relatively tough here.

The last one is, can you just tell us a bit more whether this Amplify program is requiring some CapEx or OpEx investments to get going? Thank you.

William Willms

Yes, thank you for your questions, and these are these many questions. The Amplify program is a subprogram of the overall operational excellence program.

It is, to speak, the pillar, if you look at the slide in the middle, on the tech and product excellence side. Amplify will indeed require certain investments as its investments in IT, i.e., tech infrastructure, AI, etc.

Two, no naming rights in Q4 2025. Then, your first question was in terms of our guidance.

The guidance is guidance where we're comparing on a qualitative basis to last year. As I think you were correct in saying, in Ticketing, we expect all KPIs on previous year level, respectively, slightly higher.

Live Entertainment, we expect moderate growth in adjusted EBITDA and EBIT, whereas revenues are expected to reach prior-year level. Overall, the KPIs are on or slightly higher level than previous year.

On previous year level could include both directions, below or above previous year. By adding slightly higher, we decided to add the direction.

I gave you the context in my verbatim just a minute ago, how we look at the world and the, to speak, economic globally for the time being. I hope this answered most of your questions.

Annick Maas

Yes, just a follow-up. Moderate growth, that means still 5% to 15%?

That's the number that you previously used to quote.

William Willms

Moderate growth is moderate growth. We never gave out an official percentage associated to that.

Annick Maas

The first quarter, any indications there?

William Willms

Not yet.

Annick Maas

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Ed Young from Rothschild & Co Redburn.

The floor is yours.

Ed Vyvyan

Thank you, William and Marco. I just had two questions.

Could you just elaborate, please, on what you mean by the structural income change from the long-term contracts in Ticketing? Then the second question is, there are kind of two key concerns which we hear a lot from investors around the stock.

The first is the increased competition from Live Nation in Europe, and then second are fears around AI disintermediation. Could you please comment on these two points and maybe give us a bit of your understanding of how Eventim is positioned to tackle both of those issues?

Thanks.

William Willms

I don't see AI as an intermediator, to speak, or disruptor for our business. AI will help us.

As I tried to say just a minute ago, AI and the increasing digital world is basically supporting live entertainment. It is supporting the need of people seeking unique live experiences.

AI will be used by us to drive personalization, monetization opportunities, ancillary revenues, while we don't think that AI will basically replace live experiences for human beings. We are fully committed to roll out agentic-first product and software development, as I mentioned before.

As I said, this will reach the entire value chain by 2026. We are following an agentic-first approach where we see efficiency in time to market improvements by 80% and beyond.

Live entertainment is certainly a strong competitor, but it is just one out of many. We have our own strategy.

We follow this strategy, and we are confident that with this strategy, we will return value to our shareholders, whether it's in Europe or in other places in the world.

Ed Vyvyan

Then you mentioned the structural income change from the long-term contracts impacting the guidance. Could you just discuss that a little bit, please?

William Willms

This is on this contract where there's less prepayments. It's just on a regular level contract where we have access to tickets, and that's normal contract, ticketing contract, like with any other, to speak, customer of ours.

The contract expired just by the term of it, nothing too unusual of it, okay?

Ed Vyvyan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Bernd Klanten from Barclays.

The floor is yours.

Bernd Klanten

Yes, hi William, hi Marco. First question on venues.

Can you expand a little bit on how you're exactly planning to remain asset-light while pursuing future venue projects? Then in your annual report, you listed risks based on changes in the market through products, services, innovations, business activities, and corporate values, and that was changed from low to medium.

Can you maybe expand a little bit on that, what the idea was behind that? Then on CapEx, how much did Milan costing overall when I look at sort of property, plant, and equipment?

We've seen quite a significant uptick again with €236 million versus €142 million last year. Can you perhaps give a little bit more color there, what was driving that?

Thank you very much.

William Willms

Thank you. On venues, as I mentioned and as you put it down on the slide, could mean greenfield, as well as brownfield venues.

It's not precluded that we go greenfield, but what we will change is the way how to approach the venue. We could bring in partners at an earlier stage.

We could using stage or development to core models or structuring projects where long-term capital enters once key milestones are achieved. In terms of venues being on our balance sheet, like the Unipol Forum, as I said, we're still in the process of developing the right structure.

This could include partnering with somebody. This could include SLA financial structures.

As you will know very well, there's a broad range of possibilities. We are discussing them internally at the moment.

We will discuss them with potential partners/investors or financiers in the market in due course and will come back on that later in the year at latest at the CMD. How we think about CapEx for venues over the next three to five years was, I think, the next question.

We expect a selective, project-dependent capital requirement that will flexibly align with our concrete opportunities and the respective market conditions. I therefore cannot give you now a direct and will not give you a direct number.

In doing so and following this approach, we rely both on partnership structures, as I said, and co-investments, as well as, where appropriate, on the independent execution of projects in order to deploy capital efficiently and realize opportunities in a targeted manner. Now, how much did the Unipol Forum cost?

After having hosted the ice hockey matches for the Winter Olympics this year, the venue is now almost ready. Just some technical fit-out needs to be realized in the upcoming months.

The net amount of total cost over and above what has already been recorded in our financial statements is, however, still depending on various components, including certain subsidies we are for seeing.

Bernd Klanten

Thank you very much, on the risks that you've changed in the annual report?

William Willms

What we put down on the risk section is the normal, to speak, risks, start-up operations of the Unipol Forum, the normal ramp-up risks you would consider. We are, however, having hosted Olympic Games with all these people and with the high standard of Olympic Games in the Unipol Forum, I think this can be considered as a lower risk than compared to other risks we might face in this world today.

Bernd Klanten

Thank you very much.

William Willms

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS.

The floor is yours.

Olivier Calvet

Yes, thanks. Good evening, William and Marco.

Thanks for the presentation. Just two questions left.

Could I come back on the phasing of the year? Your main competitor has had a very strong start of the year in terms of the slate they've shown.

Just curious how you see phasing and is that incorporated in your full-year '26 guidance? Then, just on venues, helpful to see the additional disclosures.

I'm just wondering if you could remind us the venues that are included in these disclosures and sort of contract in place for those, anything that would be relevant also particularly looking at '26.

Marco Haeckermann

Hey Olivier, it's Marco. Could you please repeat the last question?

Olivier Calvet

Venues. Could you remind us what you include in your new disclosures, which venues are included on revenue EBITDA, right?

The contract that are in place for those. Give us a second.

Marco Haeckermann

It's LANXESS arena in Cologne. Waldbühne.

Waldbühne. KB Hallen in Denmark.

KB Hallen in Denmark.

Olivier Calvet

Denmark.

Marco Haeckermann

Copenhagen.

Olivier Calvet

Copenhagen. Thanks.

William Willms

The first question about the phasing of the year, as you were referencing to Live Nation, right?

Olivier Calvet

Yeah.

William Willms

Yeah. Basically there is at this particular moment no particular phasing which we see throughout the year compared to what others might say.

We expect a regular year in 2026 compared to 2025.

Olivier Calvet

Okay.

Operator

Thank you for your questions. We have the next question from Gerhard Orgonas from Berenberg.

The floor is yours.

Gerhard Orgonas

Good evening. Two questions, please.

One is coming back to this long-term contract that has run out. Could you give us the financial impact from this, the headwind that you have in '26 compared to '25?

In venues, I'd be interested in what kind of scale you're looking at in terms of adding venues. Are you going to double, triple?

Or what is the magnitude that you're looking at here?

William Willms

On the first question, I understand that question of yours, but we are there bound by confidentiality agreements with the partner. On venues scale, fair question as well.

This will be scaled and always put in place with overall investment and CapEx over a year and our cash we have available at that year or respective financing. At the end of the day, there's a golden rule.

Opportunity needs to meet strategy. We will not do anything stupid.

As I mentioned before, rigorous financials will apply, as well as due diligence. At the end of the day, it's a selective approach in the geographies, the regions I mentioned.

There we talk to partners, there we talk to governments, and we talk to cities. Overall, one thing is clear: You can only as a company handle a certain amount of venues, which limits, to speak, the ability, to speak, to go overboarding.

Thirdly, as I mentioned before, venues always will basically need to provide the necessary flywheel fit, as I mentioned before, which again puts a certain limitation on where we go. I hope that answers your question.

More to be provided later at

Operator

CMD. Thank you.

There are no further questions. Back to you.

William Willms

Okay. Thank you very much.

I hope this provided helpful for you, and you're as excited as I am for our upcoming Capital Markets Day. We will talk to each other, of course, during our quarterly results discussion, but latest we will see each other then in Milan for hopefully exciting event, music event, as well as strategic and financial event.

Many thanks to everybody. Bye-bye.