TEG, the data analytics business and owner of Ticketek, is being bought by Silver Lake, a giant US-based private equity player in technology investing.
The terms of the deal haven't been revealed but the acquisition is subject to Foreign Investment Review Board approval.
TEG’s management team, led by CEO Geoff Jones, will continue to run the business and keep equity in the company .
Affinity Equity Partners bought Ticketek from Nine Entertainment for $640 million in 2015 and has been adding other products, including data and analytics for agencies and advertisers, to what became TEG.
The Asia private equity firm last year appointed Goldman Sachs to sell TEG, with reported expectations of $1 billion plus.
“The team at Affinity have been great partners for us over the last four years and have helped us to continue to scale our business,” says Jones.
“We are confident that Silver Lake is the right partner for the next stage of the company’s growth. Silver Lake brings us deep technology expertise as well as important global entertainment content and live events expertise and relationships which will help us to accelerate the growth of our platform globally.”
Last month TEG released its research insights offering, Doppler, bringing together a data set of more than 16 million Australians with its consumer panel of more than 1 million.
Dopple utilises research and first-party data to identify audiences using spend, lifestyle, geographic and demographic characteristics.
TEG says advertisers can target audiences based on motivation, intent, attitude and awareness, along with the usual attributes like age, gender, location and behaviour.
Stephen Evans, managing director at Silver Lake, says high quality live sports and entertainment content is more sought after now than ever and represents a massive global addressable market.
"We believe TEG’s innovative and integrated ticketing, content, digital marketing and analytics platform is well positioned to continue to benefit from increasing consumer demand worldwide,” he says.
“We’ve been impressed by TEG’s long-term track record of growth under Geoff Jones, most recently in partnership with the Affinity team, both organically and through strategic acquisitions."
TEG was advised on this transaction by Goldman Sachs and King & Wood Mallesons. Silver Lake was advised by Latham & Watkins and Corrs Chambers Westgarth.
Silver Lake has more than $US43 billion in assets under management.
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