Bending Spoons will announce on Friday that it has acquired Eventbrite in a deal valued at about $500 million, as it tries to reset one of the most prominent names in self-serve event ticketing after years of growth stalled out. The deal is representative of a wider wave of buyers chasing more mature software brands with name recognition but spotty economics.
Eventbrite, which was founded in 2006 by Julia and Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage, was at one point a poster child for the ascendancy of creator-led events. But audited financials have revealed that growth has hit a plateau, paving the way for an operator who’s made his name on ruthless efficiency and product-led turnarounds.
Deal terms and valuation behind the $500 million purchase
At the purchase price given by company statements and audited numbers, Bending Spoons is paying around 1.7 times Eventbrite’s trailing 12-month revenue of $295 million. The price would be $4.50 in cash per share, an 81 percent premium to the previous day’s closing price of $2.48, but still well below Eventbrite’s estimated value of around $1.76 billion when it went public in 2018.
Audited revenue for Eventbrite remained relatively flat at roughly $325 million between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024, showing the growth ceiling Bending Spoons believes it can pierce through. According to public filings, the company had raised about $330 million as a private startup from backers like Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management.
The multiple reflects the skepticism in today’s market about slower-growth software, but the premium illustrates how much cash certainty matters to long-suffering shareholders. Closing is still expected to be conditional on normal approvals and shareholder consent (subject to any deal announcement or SEC filing).
Why Bending Spoons’ model could work for Eventbrite
Bending Spoons has constructed its own playbook around buying and holding tech brands with loyal users, and then improving unit economics through cost discipline, price optimization, and focused product investment. The firm hammered home its hold-forever philosophy — a break from the playbook of traditional private equity — in previous communications and staged a recent $270 million fundraise that valued the firm at around $11 billion.
Eventbrite’s international brand recognition, large organizer universe, and marketplace dynamics all fit into this thesis. While the platform continues to be a default option for small and midsize organizers, enterprise ticketing is now led by larger incumbents. It’s that trust and distribution Bending Spoons can capitalize on, as long as it is able to drive better monetization without compromising the loyalty of organizers.
Part of the buyer’s track record when it comes to acquired software — including its use of Evernote as a way to integrate and reshape cost structure and pricing — suggests that we may see Eventbrite doing the same, with quick moves to lift margins while raising capital for product bets that can swing growth prospects back in line.
What a turnaround at Eventbrite could realistically look like
The near-term levers usually consist of optimizing redundant teams, unifying the infrastructure, and improving the pricing move for power organizers. Anticipate experimentation with higher-value subscription tiers, add-ons for marketing and analytics capabilities, and more dynamic fee structures pegged to event scale and category.
On product, the biggest opportunities are discovery and conversion: smarter recommendations, anti-fraud and chargeback controls, A/B-tested checkout flows, tighter social platform and creator tool integrations. For event organizers, automated ad buying, CRM-lite segmentation of attendees, and post-event remarketing could monetize in perpetuity without requiring a high cost to build.
If Bending Spoons were to follow through, the revenue profile could transition away from transaction-dependent and toward a more sustainable mix of subscriptions, payments, and marketing services, lessening its susceptibility to volatility while increasing lifetime value per organizer.
Industry context and key investor takeaways from the deal
The deal is emblematic of a rising class of acquirers targeting “venture zombie” software — brands with traction but muted growth. With Bending Spoons, other businesses like Constellation Software, Tiny, saas.group, Curious, Arising Ventures, and Calm Capital employ buy-fix-hold strategies aimed at generating durable cash flows rather than a quick flip.
For Eventbrite, redemption is found in operational excellence and a tidier product story more suited to creators who demand consumer-grade simplicity as well as enterprise-grade reliability. Success would leave the acquisition multiple looking like a steal; failure would reinforce the market’s skepticism over ticketing’s paper-thin margins beyond mega-promoter ecosystems.
Shareholders are seeing rapid value through an 81% cash premium; the buyer is wagering that its operating model can unlock growth that public markets no longer priced in.
To the extent that Bending Spoons can turn Eventbrite’s brand recognition and huge organizer network into juicier, stickier revenue, this could be a case study in how disciplined operators breathe new life into iconic but rudderless software names.
