China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd announced Tuesday that it has acquired online ticketing platform Damai.cn, marking a further push into entertainment.

The acquisition of Damai is part of Alibaba's big entertainment strategy, according to Alibaba's announcement on its Sina Weibo platform. Alibaba started to invest in Damai in 2014 when it was still the early stage for the big entertainment strategy.

According to 2017 annual report of Alibaba, its big entertainment units, consisting of UCWeb, Alibaba Music, Alibaba Pictures, Youku and others, are becoming the company's new main business and core source of income following e-commerce and cloud computing. By end 2016, the revenue of digital entertainment sector amounted to 4.63 billion yuan (670.3 million U.S. dollars), up 273% year on year.

 

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn

Editor: Gao Han