Ticket Monster’s mascot
Yesterday, LivingSocial announced a somewhat surprising buyer for its Korean business Ticket Monster: its main competitor Groupon.
The deal, worth $260 million in cash and stock and expected to close early next year, has been well received on Wall Street, with Groupon’s stock rising seven percent this morning despite a sizable revenue miss in the third quarter.
For LivingSocial, the sale ends a short two-plus-year marriage with Ticket Monster, which was supposed to serve as its beachhead for a large Asian expansion. In those honeymoon days, just a few months after the acquisition, LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy and Ticket Monster CEO Daniel Shin appeared at AllThingsD’s 2011 AsiaD conference with high hopes for the future and talked about how each business would benefit from the other.
The full interview, moderated by my colleague Ina Fried, is below.