Today, Alibaba is making another stride to extend its reach beyond the traditional e-commerce space. The Chinese giant has now fully acquired online ticket booking platform Daman.cn, as announced via a Weibo post. This buyout is a part of the company’s strategy to further dip its toes into the entertainment business. The financial details of this transaction haven’t been disclosed by either party.
Alibaba is extending its long-standing partnership with the ticketing platform through this full acquisition. The e-commerce giant had previously pumped capital into Damai.cn for a 32 percent stake back in 2014. And now, it is exercising full control over the company by picking up the remaining 68 percent stake. This means it now owns 100 percent of the ticketing platform.
Talking about the transaction, Yu Yongfu, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Pictures Group and head of Alibaba’s digital entertainment division said,
[The full acquisition of Damai.cn] fits nicely into our ‘health and happiness’ strategy and forms a strategic part of the value chain in our media and entertainment business.
Damai.cn will be a powerful platform to distribute our media content as well as expand our user reach and engagement.
Damai.cn is the leading ticketing platform in China, which has been operational for more than 10 years. It started out in 2007 with the primary aim of streamline ticket booking in the country. The company has a presence across 330 cities globally with 46 branches and has handled ticket booking activities for more than 1.8 million concerts and sports events. It has raised over $14.5 million in venture funding till date.
In the Weibo post, Damai mentions that it is elated to join the Alibaba family and looking forward to the journey ahead. The translated statement from Damai reads,
Ali announces its acquisition of Damai, part of our big entertainment strategy. This continues an earnest three-year romance.
The e-commerce giant will now be exploring synergies between Damai.cn and a cohort of its own entertainment units namely Youku, Alibaba Music, and Alibaba Pictures. This will help boost online to offline synergies in areas such as fan economy, production, as well as distribution. The company’s entertainment business focuses on mobile internet browsing, music and video streaming.
This investment falls in line with recent reports, which revealed that Alibaba is exploring opportunities in the entertainment industry of India. This reassures the fact that the e-commerce giant is turning its attentions to the entertainment space but has started out with an acquisition in their homeland — China. It is now also said to be involved in talks with online ticketing platforms in the country.
The rumor mill suggests that Alibaba Pictures is planning to pick a 70-75 percent majority stake in ticketing platform TicketNow, run by Orbgen Technologies. This means Alibaba is looking to also heat up the ticketing wars, with leader BookMyShow, similar to what it has incited in the e-commerce space via Paytm. Alibaba and its affiliate AliPay hold a massive 40 percent stake in the digital payments major.
