Variety Coverage: Alibaba Pictures Invests

CREDIT: COURTESY OF ALIBABA GROUP

Variety Coverage: Alibaba Pictures’ Yueke Invests in Ireland’s Showtime Analytics

LONDON – Yueke, a subsidiary of China’s Alibaba Pictures, has taken a stake in Irish movie-data company Showtime Analytics.

Showtime provides movie-theater chains with data analysis products and services. It looks at areas such as box office, occupancy rate, merchandise sales, and moviegoer habits, such as frequency of movie viewing and preferences, to help inform management decisions. Showtime has clients in more than 60 countries. A Yueke representative will join Showtime’s board.

Yueke is a pioneer in the development of software for movie theaters in China, where its Finixx system is used by more than 2,000 movie theaters. It was acquired by Alibaba Pictures in 2015.

Li Xiangxiong, general manager of Yueke, said: “With the merger of Showtime’s data analytics capability with Finixx, and taking advantage of the Big Data from the Alibaba ecology, we will be able to offer more data products and services to cinemas in China.

“Finixx, the new generation software for box offices, will undergo a complete upgrade in data operation, services for users, and integration of resources, etc. Eventually, we hope to be capable of conducting real-time analytics of various data.”

Li added: “Yueke will grow from being just a software provider into the industry’s most Internet-enabled cinema management platform. Being user-oriented and targeting users’ demand, we will create a new cinematic ecology by producing the best products and connecting the external data and resources with cinemas.”