SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - January 01, 2014) - Festival Transaction Services, Inc. (FTS) based in Seattle, WA today announced that it has signed a definitive term sheet to accept an $8.5 million investment led by Reverence Capital Partners, a New York-based investment firm.

"FTS has developed a comprehensive set of financial services for fairs and festivals that help reduce event operating expenses and generate new sources of revenue," said Milton Berlinski, Managing Partner at Reverence Capital Partners ("RCP") and former Senior Partner and Vice Chairman at Goldman Sachs. "The event industry is large, fragmented and underserved; and we are excited about the potential of FTS to deliver value to its customers and shareholders."

In connection with the closing, which took place on December 31, 2013, two partners of RCP have been nominated to the FTS board: Peter Aberg and Alex Chulack. Mr. Aberg recently retired as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs after 28 years, where he specialized in the consumer financial services industry. Alex Chulack also worked for Goldman Sachs before becoming a Managing Director focusing on financial services investments at General Atlantic LLC. Both have deep financial services domain expertise and will play active roles in helping to grow FTS.

"Events deal with mountains of cash, which is difficult to track and account for," said Peter Aberg. "FTS has developed a solution which gives events real-time visibility and reconciliation for all of their consumer and vendor transactions. There are other benefits to the FTS service, but this capability alone justifies adoption by events." Alex Chulack said, "We are particularly impressed with how FTS has leveraged partnerships, including one with Visa^®, to bring the infrastructure of the U.S. financial services industry to bear in solving the events' revenue and cash management problems."

While some service providers are offering closed-loop solutions that expose events to expensive and legally complicated escheatment issues, FTS is leveraging the regulated U.S. financial services, eliminating these issues and expense for events.

In addition to Messrs. Berlinski, Chulack and Aberg, FTS will benefit from the experience of Muneer Satter, also affiliated with RCP. Muneer Satter, a long time senior executive who raised and managed $30 billion for the mezzanine finance group within Goldman Sachs said, "FTS has integrated processing, payments and promotion to offer events a trifecta of benefits, including operational savings, increased sales from traditional sources, and new recurring revenue from retail sponsors. The bridge FTS is building between events and their retail sponsors provides a mutually beneficial virtuous circle of value for the events, their attendees and their sponsors."