TUI Musement will sell tickets to more than 250,000 concerts, festivals, theatre shows and sports events a year in the UK and Germany through a new partnership with ticketing giant CTS Eventim.
Cover image: Night-time festival crowd facing a lit stage with hotel towers behind — photo by PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
TUI Musement, the tours-and-experiences division of TUI Group, will sell tickets to more than 250,000 live events a year under a new partnership with CTS Eventim, Europe's largest ticketing group and the world's number two. The deal, announced on 20 August 2026, covers the UK and Germany and spans concerts, gigs, festivals, theatre performances and sports events, all bookable through TUI and TUI Musement apps and websites in both markets.
The move puts one of Europe's biggest tour operators squarely into the entertainment-ticketing business, and it is a direct play for one of 2026's strongest travel trends: event-led travel, or "gig-tripping", in which fans build entire trips around a concert, festival or match. TUI Musement serves more than 34.7 million TUI customers globally; Eventim sold over 300 million tickets across 25-plus countries last year and reported €3.1 billion in revenue for 2025.
What exactly did TUI and Eventim announce?
Under the agreement, Eventim's live-events inventory will sit alongside TUI Musement's existing catalogue of excursions, activities, attractions, transfers and multi-day tours. TUI says the integration supports its strategy of growing city experiences and year-round local leisure, selling to travellers on holiday and to locals at home.
"Live events are a natural extension of our portfolio and increasingly important to how people plan leisure and travel," said Peter Ulwahn, chief executive of TUI Musement. Alexander Ruoff, chief operating officer of Eventim, said the tie-up "combines TUI Musement's traveller connections with EVENTIM's entertainment portfolio". The companies have not announced packaged flight-plus-ticket bundles at launch; distribution runs through TUI's consumer apps and websites in the two markets.
What is gig-tripping and how big is the demand?
Gig-tripping describes travel booked around a live event rather than a destination. The demand signals are unusually concrete. Figures released this month by AEG-owned The O2 in London show more than a third of ticket purchasers for Ariana Grande's August–September residency are based overseas, while overseas buyers accounted for 9.6% of all O2 ticket sales in the first half of 2026, up from 8.4% across 2025.
| The O2, London — who travels for shows | Share of buyers |
|---|---|
| Ariana Grande residency purchasers based overseas (2026) | Over one-third |
| Lady Gaga Mayhem Ball UK purchasers from outside London | 51% |
| Usher residency UK purchasers from outside London (2025) | 55% |
| All O2 sales to overseas buyers, H1 2026 (vs 8.4% in 2025) | 9.6% |
Survey evidence points the same way. Expedia's Unpack '24 study of 20,000 travellers found nearly 70% were more likely to travel to a concert outside their own town, and over 40% would travel for a concert as an excuse to visit a new place. Sporting mega-events show the same pattern at national scale, as our analysis of the World Cup 2026 tourism impact found.
Is it cheaper to see a concert abroad?
Often, yes — and that arbitrage is a core driver of the trend. In the same Expedia research, 30% of travellers said they would travel outside their home city for a concert because tickets were cheaper elsewhere. For sold-out arena tours, tickets in Germany, Spain or Poland can be both cheaper and simply available when home-market dates are gone, making the flight and hotel part of the ticket price calculation.
For destination marketers, that turns tour calendars into demand-generation tools that fill hotels midweek and outside peak season — a useful complement to the shoulder-season travel boom cities are already courting.
Why are tour operators selling event tickets?
Experiences are one of the few high-growth, high-margin corners of the travel market, and TUI has been explicit about growing TUI Musement into a standalone revenue engine rather than an add-on for package customers. Adding a quarter of a million ticketed events instantly differentiates its catalogue from experiences rivals Viator, GetYourGuide and Klook, which focus mainly on tours, attractions and activities rather than dated live-event inventory.
There is a distribution logic too. Event tickets are a high-frequency purchase that gives TUI a reason to interact with customers between holidays — the classic engagement problem for operators and OTAs alike, as we explain in how online travel agencies work. Each ticket sale is also a prompt to attach the hotel, transfer or city experience around it. For Eventim, TUI brings 34.7 million customers of incremental, travel-intent demand for its promoters and venues.
What happens next?
The obvious test is whether ticket sales convert into trip attachment — and whether the partnership extends beyond the UK and Germany into TUI's other European source markets. Expect competitors to respond: experiences platforms have been expanding event inventory, and AI trip planners are increasingly building itineraries around events, a shift covered in our guide to AI trip-planning tools. If gig-tripping keeps growing at the rate The O2's numbers suggest, dated live-event inventory could become table stakes in the experiences race.
Frequently asked questions
What is the TUI Eventim partnership?
Announced on 20 August 2026, it is an agreement under which TUI Musement, TUI Group's tours-and-experiences business, will offer tickets to more than 250,000 live events a year — concerts, gigs, festivals, theatre and sports — supplied by CTS Eventim, Europe's largest ticketing group. The inventory covers the UK and Germany and sits alongside TUI Musement's existing excursions, activities and attractions.
How can travellers buy event tickets from TUI?
Tickets are sold through the TUI and TUI Musement apps and websites in the UK and Germany, alongside the division's existing experiences catalogue. The companies have not announced pre-packaged flight-plus-ticket holiday bundles at launch, though the integration is designed so events can be booked together with city experiences, transfers and other in-destination products.
What is gig-tripping?
Gig-tripping is travel planned around a live event — a concert, festival or sports fixture — rather than a destination. It is one of 2026's strongest travel trends: Expedia research found nearly 70% of travellers were more likely to travel to a concert outside their own town, and The O2 in London says more than a third of buyers for Ariana Grande's 2026 residency are based overseas.
Why do fans travel abroad for concerts?
Availability and price. When home-market dates sell out, tickets in other countries are often still on sale, and in Expedia's survey 30% of travellers said they would travel for a concert because tickets were cheaper elsewhere. Many fans also treat the show as a reason to visit a new city, combining the event with a short break.
Sources
- TUI Group — TUI Musement adds 250,000 live events to experiences portfolio through EVENTIM partnership
- Access All Areas — The O2 reports rise in overseas ticket sales
- TheTicketingBusiness — Fans willing to travel, as one third of ticket-holders for Ariana Grande at The O2 from outside UK
- Expedia Newsroom — Introducing Unpack '24: The trends in travel
- IQ Magazine — Ariana Grande's London residency drives surge in music tourism
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