Eventbrite acquired: Eventbrite entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bending Spoons for about $500 Million, or $4.50 per share. This is obviously a big decrease from when they went public in 2018 at $37 a share and a loss of $Billions in valuation. It is even lower than the pandemic low of $5.83. In contrast, we reported a successful run in our quarterly earnings reports, including Q3.
Eventbrite has struggled to get revenue and ticket sales back to what they were pre pandemic. This is due to a number of issues we have reported on, including high pricing, continual layoffs, offshoring and outsourcing of jobs, erratic policies on pricing, and failing to continue to improve the value of their platform. They also made a strategic bad bet that they were a marketplace, which helped generate some incremental revenue, but hurt their customer and product focus.
Table of Contents
Eventbrite Acquired: Who is Bending Spoons?
They are a different type of private equity company. They have taken $4.9 Billion of capital investment from tier 1 investors like Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Goldman, JP Morgan, etc. They have rolled up a number of companies like AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, Meetup, etc. As Techcrunch explained:
“Bending Spoons is anything but a passive owner, making changes to the products’ user experience and features but also to the underlying tech; monetization strategy, including pricing; and team organization, including headcount.”
Google Gemini created these helpful charts to see some of the past companies and impact on headcount:
| Acquired Company | Date of Acquisition (Approx) | Employees Laid Off | Details/Percent of Workforce |
| Filmic | 2022 | Entire staff laid off | The entire workforce was let go, and the app was integrated into Bending Spoons’ platform |
| Evernote | November 2022 | 129 employees initially, followed by nearly all remaining US and Chile staff | Operations were centralized in Europe, resulting in almost all local employees being dismissed. |
| Mosaic Group | January 2024 | 330 employees | The entire workforce of Mosaic Group was laid off as they were not a part of the acquisition plan. |
| Meetup | January 2024 | Mass layoffs (specific number not reported) | Job cuts and operations moved to Europe. |
| WeTransfer | July 2024 | ~260 employees | Bending Spoons laid off 75% of the staff after acquisition. |
| Brightcove | February 2025 | ~198 employees | This represented about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce and a large percentage of the total staff. |
| Komoot | March 2025 | ~85% of staff | Approximately 85% of the staff, upwards of 150 people, were let go. |
Google Gemini also created this chart showing what has happened to pricing for companies acquired by Bending Spoons:
| Acquired Company | Product/Plan | Pre-Acquisition Pricing (Approx) | Post-Acquisition Pricing (Approx) | Details of Increase |
| Evernote | Personal Plan (Annual) | ~79 per year (or $6.99/month) | ~130 per year (or $12.99/month) | A significant increase of approximately 63%. Some users reported increases of up to 160%. |
| Evernote | Teams/Enterprise | Various | Substantially higher plans | Some users reported nearly five-fold increase in cost for team plans. |
| Filmic | Filmic Pro App | One-time purchase of ~$19 | Subscription model: ~$2.99/week or $39.99-$69.99/year | Shift from a one-time purchase to a recurring subscription, making it significantly more expensive over time. |
What Does This Mean for Eventbrite Customers?
It will likely take several months for this deal to close, so there will not be a lot of changes in the near term. It is likely that high quality talent might start leaving the company, although there are typically some golden handcuffs to keep key people from leaving.
Once the deal is complete, we would expect Bending Spoons to follow a similar path as they have in the past to earn a return on their $500 Million in cash: Cut costs. Based on the history of Bending Spoons, we expect this means cut headcount and raise prices. There might also be an attempt at a tech mashup between Meetup and Eventbrite to reduce duplicative costs.
ForEventbrite customers, that likely means an increase in prices and a poorer quality of service. Additionally, there is often a stagnation in technology after an acquisition because it is hard for new people to take the place of existing talent and experience.
What Does This Mean for TicketSignup?
As a ticketing company with more than 15 years of experience in the event space, we have a number of thoughts:
- Selfishly, we are a little bummed. One of our longer term goals was to grow larger than Eventbrite over the next decade or so as the graph got closer and closer to 1 (equal size). With this acquisition, their results will no longer be published publicly for us to compare to.
2. We know that this will result in unhappy Eventbrite customers, who will be looking for a new event technology provider. So, this is an opportunity to help a large number of new customers. Here is a PDF of our Eventbrite to RunSignup Migration Guide.
3. This reinforces our Employee Owned company structure. It will highlight the differences between our long term approach and the financial and political approaches of Public and Private Equity owned company. Also, the low valuation will likely stall new investment in event technology. Our slow growth will be seen as being the stable technology company for events.