LN buys BigCampagne

THAT’S A LOTTA DIGITS: They’re popping the bubbly at BigChampagne, which has been bought by—yup—the very same Live Nation, the companies confirmed yesterday. As part of the deal, CEO Eric Garland will become GM of livenation.com, and Joe Fleischer, who co-founded BigChampagne with Garland in 2001 after a long run at HITS, will be SVP of Content and Product strategy for the site. All 26 of BigChampagne’s employees will work for the mothership, in its attempt to “power social discovery, content relevancy and product personalization across Live Nation’s businesses,” according to a news release. In an interview with the N.Y. Times’ Ben Sisario, Michael Rapino said that BigChampagne would help his company churn through the huge amounts of data it collects from its customers when they buy concert tickets or merchandise, as well as continue to take the temperature of pop culture online. “We love the basics of what they’ve created, and love the idea of taking an incredible amount of fan data off- and online and merging that into a relevant database of what artists are most popular and relevant to today’s consumer,” Rapino said. Although the price tag for the acquisition wasn’t disclosed, a source told Digital Music News it was close to $30 million. "It's definitely not fuck you money, but it's a decent exit," another source told DMN. (12/15a)