Events business in 2022: PH Deballon on BFM Business

“Despite infla­tion, we have made the strong choice not to increase our prices to sup­port the indus­try.”

On 25 August 2022, Pierre-Hen­ri Debal­lon, CEO of Weezevent, was inter­viewed on the French TV chan­nel, spe­cialised in busi­ness, BFM Busi­ness.

In this inter­view, he talks about Weezeven­t’s work at Rock-en-Seine fes­ti­val, which closed a record-break­ing 2022 sum­mer sea­son. Weezeven­t’s access con­trol and cash­less solu­tions have been imple­ment­ed at this event since 2016. In terms of cash­less, Weezevent also equips Europe’s largest fes­ti­vals such as Boom­town in the UK, Fes­ti­val Inter­na­cional de Benicàs­sim in Spain, Paléo Fes­ti­val in Switzer­land, Boom Fes­ti­val in Por­tu­gal, Dour in Bel­gium and Fre­quen­cy in Ger­many.
This inter­na­tion­al expan­sion was sup­port­ed by the acqui­si­tion of Play­Pass, Weezeven­t’s Bel­gian com­peti­tor. Since this merg­er, Pierre-Hen­ri announces a strong increase in Weezevent’s inter­na­tion­al activ­i­ty, going from 20% to 50% of Weezeven­t’s glob­al activ­i­ty.

Pierre-Hen­ri then offers his analy­sis of the Covid-19 cri­sis, the cur­rent socio-eco­nom­ic news and its impact on Weezevent. With a healthy finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and a strong cul­ture of prof­itabil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny was able to con­tin­ue its activ­i­ty in a year of total stand­still for the events sec­tor. Weezevent thus announces a pos­i­tive annu­al bal­ance sheet, where some of its com­peti­tors are expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties.

Res­olute­ly opti­mistic about the out­come of the sit­u­a­tion, the chal­lenge of 2021 was to pre­pare for a sig­nif­i­cant major recov­ery of the events sec­tor, in order to be able to sup­port a large num­ber of organ­is­ers and help them win back their audi­ences in 2022. With events last­ing longer, larg­er audi­ences, and high atten­dance rates, Weezevent notes that the desire for a return to events and par­ty­ing was very real. An obser­va­tion is nev­er­the­less made on the impact of the drop in pur­chas­ing pow­er, lead­ing to a change in cus­tomer habits with a greater share of last minute tick­et pur­chas­es than before.

Final­ly, the sin­cere ded­i­ca­tion of the entire Weezevent team has made it pos­si­ble to deal with sup­ply dif­fi­cul­ties, the infla­tion affect­ing the organ­is­ers, and the sig­nif­i­cant staff turnover that the cri­sis has engen­dered. In spite of this, in order to con­tin­ue to sup­port the event indus­try, Weezevent has cho­sen not to increase its prices in Europe, despite high­er pro­duc­tion costs.

To find out more, view the full inter­view below (in French):