Tencent and China’s number one online ticketing company ,Weiying Technology, are investing $85 million in YG Entertainment, one of the leading record labels in the Korean pop landscape.
Established by Yang Hyun-suk, former member of legendary Korean group Seo Taiji and Boys teaming with his younger brother Yang Min-suk in 1996 as a record label devoted to hip hop, the company has become one of the three big players in the Korean pop music segment along with SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment.
Leaving aside the record label, YG (Yang Goon) Entertainment operates a talent agency, a clothing line, cosmetics brand, an event management and concert production company, music production company, and music publishing house.
Min-Suk Yang, CEO of YG Entertainment, will sign the investment agreements in a ceremony with Suman Wang, General Manager of Film/Drama Department and Editor in Chief of Tencent Video, Lin Ning, CEO of Weiying Technology at Hyatt Hotel in Seoul tomorrow 31st May.
Weiying Technology and Tencent will respectively invest US$55 million and US$30 million and hold 8.2% and 4.5% in YG, becoming the third and fourth largest shareholders of YG after L Capital Asia, the investment arm of LVMH Group.
Weiying Technology operates the mobile ticketing application called Wepiao, which runs on Tencent’s platforms including QQ and Weixin. The company sells tickets for movies, shows and sporting events online and has over 20 million active users.
Weiying Technology acquired Gewara, the second largest player in the ticketing market last year, to reinforce its number one position in the Chinese market. Based on its online ticketing business, Weiying Technology is expanding its business scope to the content development area including film production and concert organization.
Tencent operates the most popular social and media platforms in China, including QQ and Weixin/WeChat for communications, QQ Music for music content and Tencent Video for video content. Tencent has been working with YG since 2015 with QQ Music exclusively distributing YG’s music and MV content in China. YG and Tencent also plan to co-produce media content together in the near future.
Tencent commented, “The move deepens our already successful relationship with YG, as evidenced by the exclusive content partnership between QQ Music and YG. Leveraging our extensive user reach, multi-platform capabilities and deep understanding of the China market, we look forward to working with YG to meet the huge appetite in China for popular Korean entertainment such as music, concerts and variety shows, and to exploring new business opportunities.”
Weiying Technology commented, “Weiying is a fast growing internet company with roots in online ticketing, and became a major player in entertaining business in China within the past 2 years. We truly believe online platform with offline capability likeWeiying and Tencent, in-depth linked with the best content provider like YG, could make an enormous combination and magnify the value of contents in new market, like 10 times.”
