The California-based Events.com has now acquired Operabase, a performing arts data and discovery platform.
Previously operated by Arts Consolidated ApS, Operabase will continue its services as usual while Events.com integrates its data architecture, AI, and IT across its range of live event categories.
Founded in 1996, Operabase has spent three decades collecting and structuring information about live performances, amassing a verified archive of over one million productions. Its platform is available in 31 languages and is used by performing arts organizations, venues, agencies, artists, and audience members for professional discovery, casting, season planning, and archival research.
While Operabase developed the technology to convert fragmented information into a machine-readable record of live performances worldwide in opera and performing arts, Events.com’s acquisition will allow that capability to scale further within the live music sector.
Events.com, which was established in 2009 for event discovery, ticketing, registration, sponsorship, and event management, has also welcomed Operabase’s Copenhagen team to its ranks.
Alongside its current operations, the Copenhagen team will also join Event.com as it plans future developments for the arts platform, including plans to expand its multilingual accessibility.
Operabase now joins Events.com’s portfolio that includes Summit, an invite-based community for founders and creators; virtual events platform Remo; the La Jolla Concours d’Elegance; and the Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival. Events.com has also previously acquired Evensi, an AI-powered business of event discovery.
“We are excited to expand the surface area for event goers and event producers to access more intuitive and trusted experiences with the addition of the Operabase team,” says Events.com board member Doug R. Harrison. “Operabase’s product, data and engineering teams have onboarded and are now plugged into the greater Events.com network of employees worldwide, continuing their work from Copenhagen.”
“We’ve built a data platform that turns thousands of fragmented sources into a single connected, machine-readable record of live performance, spanning countries, cultures and languages, while combining automated reconciliation and AI-assisted quality assurance with expert human oversight,” adds Peter Palludan, chief technology officer of Operabase. “Operabase applies that technology to opera and performing arts, but the underlying platform is designed for the full breadth of the live performance economy.”
“Operabase has been called the ‘LinkedIn of the performing arts,’ and we’re honored to extend that vision across the entire world of events and experiences,” expresses Mitch Thrower, CEO of Events.com. “Reference data graphs that people subscribe to, and get real value from, are built patiently, over years, with no shortcuts. Operabase’s investors and builders funded and verified a record of live performance that exists nowhere else; as a result, artists have real agency in a machine-driven world, helping them stay discoverable, verifiable and representative of their authentic work. Events.com is here to help this scale.”
