Alisports, the sports subsidiary of e-commerce group Alibaba, completed a RMB1.2bn ($190m) series A funding round supported by a host of investors. Yunfeng Capital, the investment firm co-founded by Alibaba’s executive chairman Jack Ma, led the round, which also featured local insurance firm China Taiping Insurance. The transaction reportedly valued Alisports at $1.3bn.
Founded in 2015, Alisports runs a professional sports platform integrating e-commerce, media, marketing, cloud computing and video. It targets areas such as ticketing, events management and copyright.
At the time of this funding round, Alisports also announced its acquisition of fitness app and wearables producer Ledongli for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2012, Lodongli has developed a health tracking mobile application, which uses music to record walks, runs or rides to understand user’s movement patterns and calories. Alisports will use Ledonglias an entry point into new sports retail, a term used by the company to define a business model at the intersection of online and offline retail assets.
There has been growing interest by corporate venturers in the sports space, as the historical bar chart by GCV Analytics here suggests. The deal count of corporate-backed rounds in promising enterprises from this realm doubled from 28 in 2014 to 57 in 2016 but then went down to 47 last year. The estimated total capital in such rounds, however, grew steadily from $538m to $6.39bn in 2017.
