Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s cultural and entertainment group has fully acquired Damai.cn, a Bejing-based online ticketing platform, according to a company announcement.
No financial details were announced.
After the completion of the deal, Damai.cn will cooperate with Alibaba’s music division, connecting music application with concert ticketing. The two companies will also form a new music business model connecting singers, tickets and music fans.
Alibaba created a cultural and entertainment group last November to put businesses such as online video platform Youku Tudou, browser company UCWeb, Alibaba Pictures, Alibaba Music, Alibaba Sports and Alibaba Digital Entertainment under one umbrella.
The unit wanted to raise a RMB10 billion (US$1.4 billion) fund to invest and consolidate in the cultural, media and entertainment sectors in China. Today’s deal is one of its first moves to acquire and merge assets to create a broader platform, following Alibaba Pictures’ acquisition of Heyi Pictures, a film company under Alibaba’s video content platform Youku Tudou.
Zhang Yu, vice president at Alibaba and secretary at cultural and entertainment group, will be appointed as Damai.cn’s new chief executive officer.
Founded in 2004, Damai.cn is an online ticketing platform in China, selling tickets to concerts, dramas, operas, and sports matches. The company claims to have hundreds of millions of registered users, and has sold tickets for over 1.8 million events in 330 cities around the world.
It previously raised RMB30 million (US$4 million) series A round from Legend Capital in 2005, and received RMB100 million (US$14 million) financing from SIG and Legend Capital five years later. In 2015, Alibaba led an undisclosed series C round in the company.
