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eBay buys Spanish ticketing platform Ticketbis to expand StubHub

Ticketbis has a presence in 47 countries, which eBay plans to use to help StubHub gain more traction overseas.
Written by Natalie Gagliordi, Contributor

eBay said Tuesday it is acquiring Ticketbis, a Spain-based online ticket marketplace, to give its own ticketing platform StubHub more traction overseas.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but some reports suggest eBay paid $165 million to buy the company.

Ticketbis has a presence in 47 countries, eBay said. By comparison, StubHub operates in just three regions internationally: Mexico, Germany and the U.K.

"The acquisition of Ticketbis will enable us to significantly scale StubHub's international footprint," said eBay CEO Devin Wenig. "eBay's global presence will help StubHub acquire new customers as it expands into markets outside of the U.S. This deal reaffirms our commitment to investing in StubHub and helping fuel its momentum."

eBay's renewed focus on StubHub is a total revenue play. The e-commerce marketplace has been struggling to recapture the growth momentum it had prior to its split from PayPal last year.

However, in eBay's most recent quarterly earnings report, StubHub was shown to have grown revenue by 34 percent to $177 million -- significantly above eBay's tepid 4 percent growth rate overall.

Earlier this month StubHub kicked off a media advertising campaign and rebranded its logo in an attempt bring more users to the platform. The main goal with the rebrand was to appeal to today's picture-sharing, social media generation of millennials.

The company posits that the more people share their experiences from ticketed events across social media, the more others will want to go out and experience something similar -- and in turn, purchase tickets on StubHub.

As for the Ticketbis deal, eBay said the transaction is expected to close by mid-2016.

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