The ticketing company benefited from soaring concert sales last year, almost doubling its profit, and is also pivoting towards pop-culture merchandise

image credit: Author

Key Takeaways:

• Damai Entertainment has predicted its annual net profit for 2025 will surge by more than 90%, driven by strong demand for live music performances
• The company is also moving beyond ticketing into IP merchandising and cute collectibles

China's concert sector has boomed over the past two years, driven by demand for live experiences and a government drive to boost leisure consumption.

As concerts have become big business in many cities, tours for big-name acts popular with a young crowd, such as Jay Chou, Mayday or Jason Zhang, are typically selling out. Which is good news for Damai Entertainment Holdings Ltd (1060.HK), one of China's leading ticketing platforms.

In a May 8 statement, the company said its profits for the year to March were expected to jump 92% or more to at least 700 million yuan ($103 million) from around 364 million yuan a year earlier. The company cited what it called a more stable asset structure, lower risk exposure within its portfolio and reduced investment losses.

Originally operating as Alibaba Pictures, the business rebranded as Damai Entertainment last year and has been scaling back its film and TV projects, which can be volatile and weigh on profits. Instead the firm has been shifting towards live entertainment, ticketing and cute merchandise derived from copyrighted cartoon or film characters.

China's large-scale concert box office revenue rose 13.7% in 2025 to 29.56 billion, according to figures from China's performing arts association. Including related spending, the concert economy is estimated to have generated more than 220 billion yuan in overall consumption. As one of the industry leaders, Damai Entertainment has clearly benefited from this trend, as illustrated by its half-year revenues to the end of September, which rose 33%. Performance content and technology businesses were the biggest revenue source, with income rising 15% to 1.34 billion yuan.

A closer look at the revenue structure reveals that the fastest-growing segment is no longer ticketing, but rather merchandise based on intellectual property and other derivative businesses. This revenue stream doubled to 1.16 billion yuan in the half year, generating a 44% jump in profit to 235 million yuan. The growth reflects the rapid rise of China's so-called "guzi economy", in which younger consumers are keen to buy licensed merchandise featuring their favorite anime or game content, such as badges, figurines, cuddly toys and keychains. By monetizing IP, Damai Entertainment can go beyond one-off consumer purchases to develop longer-cycle revenue streams tied to merchandise and offline experiences.

AI-enabled design

Through the IP commercialization platform "Alifish", Damai has partnered with well-known Japanese character brands and media franchises such as Sanrio, Chiikawa, Pokémon and Crayon Shin-chan. It has also launched co-branded collaborations with the Chinese retail brands Miniso and Pop Mart to expand its presence across the entertainment IP spectrum.

Beyond that, Damai has begun integrating AI into its design processes, working with Alibaba's Tongyi large language model team on the AI-powered program "MiaoYa" as a tool to encourage more creators to participate in toy design and development.

Coming up with trendy toys used to rely on costly design professionals and long product development cycles, but AI promises to lower the creative barriers and accelerate the process. Damai could further expand its reach If these tools can eventually integrate with Alifish's resources and distribution channels such as Taobao and Tmall or offline events.

Damai has also started to expand into mass-market ticketing, testing a discounted movie ticket platform called TixGenie. The small-scale pilot has limited coverage for now but signals an expansionist intent, as the company positions itself as a comprehensive platform spanning concerts, movies, IP businesses, designer toys and offline entertainment.

Still, the lifespan of popular IPs is often limited, and market trends can shift quickly. The availability of AI tools could intensify competition, generating increasingly similar design concepts that could erode an IP's status and scarcity value.

Damai currently trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of around 30.5 times, enjoying a platform-style premium when compared with the 10.6 times for movie ticketing service Maoyan Entertainment (1896.HK).

Goldman Sachs recently estimated that Damai's live entertainment and IP business could grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 25% over the next two years, judging it to be less vulnerable to AI disruption than purely online entertainment platforms.

But the investment bank also cut its target price for the company from HK$1.07 to HK$0.92, suggesting that growth hopes have already been priced in as the share rallied over recent years. Investors will be looking to see whether Damai can justify its high valuation with consistent returns from its evolving entertainment ecosystem.

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Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.