User:Annemarie Schick/sandbox

Scumeck Sabottka, German tour and concert organizer[edit]

Scumeck (Stefan) Sabottka (* 18 January 1962 in Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German concert and tour organizer and founder of the online ticketing portal tickets.de.^[1]

Life[edit]

Scumeck Sabottka is the eldest child (of three children) of the merchant Hans Georg Sabottka and his wife Adelheid (née Kuntze). At the age of 18, Sabottka moved to West Berlin and joined the punk scene there.

In his home town, he was already a guitarist for the Dortmund punk rock group 'Public Enemy'. He got to know the musicians FM Einheit from the Hamburg group Abwärts and in 1982 he worked as the band’s driver. Later he became tour manager of the group Einstürzende Neubauten, which he accompanied internationally until 1984.^[2]

Also in 1982, he organised his first concert at the SO 36 Club in Berlin with the Australian noise electric group, ‘SPK’.

In August 1984, together with the head of the company ‘Rough Trade Booking’ Dietrich Eggert and the manager of the band Die Toten Hosen, Jochen Hülder, he founded the company ‘MCT, Music Consulting Team GmbH’, in Herne. The company’s first tours were for the punk band Ramones from New York, the British punk combo King Kurt and the English avantgarde musician John Cale. Parallel to this, Sabottka worked as an international tour manager for Violent Femmes and Johnathan Richman. ^[3]

After the departure of Eggert and Hülder, Sabottka took over the company MCT in 1988 with the Düsseldorf concert organisers Bernhard Lewkowicz and Rene Heinersdorff jr. ^[4]

In 1994 Sabottka moved to Munich with MCT, split from Lewkowicz and Heinersdorff jr and joined up with the famous concert organisers Marcel Avram and Fritz Rau, who took over the majority of the company shares. During this time (from 1994-1999) Sabottka organised concerts for artists such as: R.E.M, Lenny Kravitz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cramps, Celine Dion, Tom Waits, Tanita Tikaram, Marilyn Manson, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kraftwerk, Robbie Williams, Nick Cave and many more. ^[5]

In 1998, Sabottka bought back all Avram & Rau's shares and moved to Berlin again. Since 1991 Sabottka has been responsible for the worldwide coordination of the live performances of the electronic pioneers Kraftwerk and the German rock band Rammstein. This was followed by stadium tours with Robbie Williams, which sold about 1.2 million tickets in 2006.

In 2005 Sabottka founded the internet concert ticket sales portal 'Tickets.de' (which he sold in 2010). For the first time in 2010, 150,000 personalised concert tickets were sold worldwide for the band Take That’s stadium tour. This was followed by the heated battle against the secondary sale of concert tickets at inflated prices. ^[6]

In 2017, the documentary “Der Konzertdealer” by filmmaker Sobo Swobodnik about Scumeck Sabottka, which depicted the harsh, globalised business behind the tours in the backstage area of the concert industry, was released in German cinemas. The film music is by British experimentalist and artist Dinos Chapman. ^[7]

Quotations about/from Scumeck Sabottka[edit]

“To me, Scumeck is like a brother and, in my opinion, one of the best organisers in the industry.” (Marcel Avram, Concert Organiser)

“From the start I felt that Scumeck understands us and we have a common denominator. He won me over me with deeds, which took no time.” (Paul Landers, guitarist for Rammstein)

“We chose Scumeck because we felt he was the person who understood how to bring Kraftwerk to a younger audience.” (Emma Banks, Kraftwerk’s agent)

“The most important thing about the show is the beginning, the first seconds and minutes, because every time I start tingling” (Scumeck Sabottka)