Alibaba Pictures to Pay $167 Million for Damai, Chinese Live Events Firm, Signaling Group’s Entertainment Reshuffle
19.09.2023 - 15:43
/ variety.com
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief
Alibaba Pictures, the separately-listed film investment and distribution unit of China’s tech giant Alibaba behind recent box office hit “Lost in the Stars,” is to buy Damai. The target company is a major provider of live entertainment in the country that is currently controlled by the Alibaba parent company.
The transaction is valued at $167 million, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday, and will be paid for by the issue of new Alibaba Pictures shares.
Damai is involved in concerts, musical festivals, live house performances, plays, sports events and exhibitions in China.
It “engages in the full life cycle of live performances, including production, promotion and ticketing,” and has served over 1.8 million events with over 100 million registered customers cumulatively, Alibaba Pictures said.
Alibaba Pictures president Li Jie called the diversification into live events that the Damai buy represents “a new chapter” for the Hong Kong-listed company. “By further expanding the upstream presence of the Damai brand in [the] live entertainment industry value chain, such as events production and promotion, venue operation and artist management, [Alibaba Pictures] aims to strengthen scale advantages and barriers to entry, and further build brand awareness for its offline entertainment business,” it said.
Damai was badly affected by the impact of the COVID pandemic on live events.
It lost money in each of its three previous financial year to March – RMB322 million, RMB138 million and RMB99 million, respectively. But its gross revenue (GMV) in the three months from April to June has recovered strongly to overtake that of the entire 2022-23 year.
While the size of the Damai transaction is
.
The website celebfans.org is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.