DEAG Deutsche Entertainment AG is changing chief executive. Markus Breitenecker, 57, joins the Vorstand — the management board — on 1 November 2026 and takes over as its chairman; Detlef Kornett, 63, leaves the company on 31 December.
The handover was announced on 29 September in a statement from the company itself. Breitenecker is also acquiring a stake in DEAG's capital: the size of that stake was not made public. He arrives from ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, where he was a board member and chief operating officer. Tobias Buck, chairman of the Aufsichtsrat — the supervisory board — described him as an experienced media and entertainment executive. Kornett departs after 13 years on the Vorstand: Co-CEO from 2023 and chairman from 2024. The statement gives no other reason for his departure. The same text puts 2025 revenue at around €490 million, the highest in the group's history.
The first-half results, published on 31 August, describe the business the new chairman is taking on. Revenue of €157.4 million between January and June, against €155.4 million in the same period of 2025. EBITDA of €6.5 million, against €6.6 million. For the whole of 2026 the company expects revenue "well above €400 million"; that forecast sets no ceiling.
The figure that defines the company sits in that same report. By the end of June DEAG had sold more than 6 million tickets for events in 2026 and 2027, and most of that volume ran through its own ticketing platforms: myticket.de, myticket.at, myticket.co.uk and gigantic.com. This is not a promoter that hires a ticketing company. It is a promoter that is also the ticketing company.
That is the detail worth reading for anyone deciding who to sell through. DEAG is not the only case in the German market where the event organiser and the owner of the sales channel are the same house: in CTS Eventim's accounts, ticketing and live are measured separately — a different company, different numbers. That is also why a promoter does well to read the terms of self-sale products closely, such as Eventim Light's per-ticket fees. At the other end of the same market, small venues are funded by the Club-Euro's one euro per ticket.
Breitenecker takes the chair from 1 November; Kornett stays with the company until the end of the year. And the new chairman comes from the media business, not from live entertainment. Two things are still unknown: how much capital he is buying, and what he will do with an in-house sales channel that already carries most of the volume.