ID&T — the Dutch company behind the production of TomorrowWorld, Tomorrowland, Sensation, Q-dance, Mysteryland, and other famed EDM event brands — is now 100 percent owned by US-based SFX Entertainment.
SFX, headed by media mogul Robert Sillerman, previously owned a 75 percent interest in ID&T until the company announced the full ownership acquisition today during a panel discussion at Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), inthemix reports.
“We finalized the deal an hour ago,” ID&T CEO and Founder Duncan Stutterheim told the audience.
“Now it’s very clear, I work for SFX. I will be working at head office in Europe, and we’re going to create still the same shows. But from this point, ID&T and SFX will be together.”
Although Stutterheim had turned down significant investment offers just one year ago, he says the SFX acquisition allows ID&T the opportunity to grow beyond what it could do alone.
“As we [SFX and ID&T] continued to work together, at some point a list came up of the possibilities of what could be done if we sold the company,” Stutterheim said.
ID&T has had a strong hold on the European EDM event market for over a decade, but last year started expanding to the U.S. with the help of SFX, bringing festivals like TomorrowWorld, Sensation, and Mysterland across the Atlantic.
“TomorrowWorld was an example of that. The festival costs $16 million to put up. Those are amounts of money that we just don’t have. We are a big company, but we can’t invest that kind of money. So it was an opportunity for the company to grow.”
The inaugural TomorrowWorld attracted some 46,000 to a farm outside Atlanta, Ga. last month. The company is said to have signed a 10 year agreement with that venue.
SFX has spent the last 16 months acquiring significant brands in the EDM world, including Beatport, Disco Donnie Presents, Life in Color (formerly Dayglow), Australia’s Sereosonic, and several others. SFX began trading publicly on the NASDAQ just last week.
ID&T’s biggest contender in the U.S. market, Insomniac Events, also announced a creative partnership with Live Nation earlier this year, joining a family of brands including HARD Events, Cream, and Creamfields.
