Fever Buys DICE // Media & Events Co Makes 2nd Ticketing Platform Purchase

July 3, 2025 by Chris Erwin

RockWater Roundup

M&A analysis of the creator economy to make you a better operator and investor.

Today we discuss Fever’s acquisition of DICE, a live events ticketing platform. We cover deal details, strategic rationale, why Fever is building upon their recent Atom Tickets acquisition, and plan to turn Fever’s media business into a commerce-driven platform.

Let’s break it down…

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–TARGET: Dice–

Overview

Online live events ticketing platform focused on music, culture, and lifestyle
Mission: “get people out more by enhancing the fan experience”
Founded in 2014 by Phillip Hutcheon
360+ associated members on LinkedIn
HQ’d in London

Company Highlights

In past two years, DICE has doubled its ticket sales
Recently sold Boiler Room, a popular standup DJ event
Has 10M+ monthly active members

Business Lines

Event Discovery Platform: mobile and web app for fans to discover live events, concerts, and club nights
Ticketing Services: end-to-end ticketing solution for promoters, venues, and artists
Event Marketing Tools: promotional and audience targeting tools for event organizers
Fan Engagement & Data Insights: audience analytics and insights platform for organizers

Capital Markets History

Total Raised: $131M
Early-Stage Investors: White Star Capital, Evolution Equity Partners
Largest Investors: Mirabaud Asset Management, SoftBank Group
Jun’25 – Acquired by Fever
Jan’25 – Divested Boiler Room to festival operator Superstruct Entertainment
Sep’21 – $123M Series C
Jun’16 – $6M Series A
Sep’14 – $1.6M in seed funding

–BUYER: Fever–

Overview

Modern live events company creating and curating experiential entertainment
Started as a booking and discovery platform for third-party events
Evolved into a full-stack experience platform: content, media, data, and commerce
Founded in 2014 by Ignacio Ströhlein, Francisco Hein, Pep Gomez, Alexandre Perez Casares
3,500+ associated members on LinkedIn
HQ’d in NYC w/ offices in the US, Mexico, Spain, UK, France

Business Lines

Owned & Operated Experiences:
Produces original, data-driven events (e.g. Candlelight, classical music concert) based on localized demand trends
Other notable experiences include Van Gogh Immersive Experience and Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
Secret Media Network: Portfolio of city-specific “whats going on this weekend” social pages (e.g. Secret NYC, Secret London). Drives discovery and ticket sales through organic traffic and paid media.
Ticketing & Discovery Platform:
Aggregates third-party events and distributes them via website/app. Fever now also owns ticketing infrastructure
Handles content, promotion, and ticketing for external event producers

Company Highlights

125M+ users across 200 major cities in 30+ countries
Hosts 150K+ events on platform for ticket purchase
Secret Media Network operates in 100+ cities
Developed viral experiences including Candlelight, Van Gogh Immersive, and Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
Built full-funnel infrastructure from original live events platform:
Content → promotion → commerce

M&A History

Jun’25 – Acquired DICE
Mar’25 – Acquired Atom Tickets

Funding History

Total Raised: $570M
Later-Stage Investors: Goldman Sachs, Alignment Growth, Goodwater Capital, Smash Capital, Eurazeo, Vitruvian Partners and Atresmedia
Early-Stage Investors: 14W, Accel Partners, Ventures Europe
Largest Investors: L Catterton, Point72
Jun’25 – $100M PE Growth Investment
Jan’23 – $110M PE Growth Investment
Feb’22 – $227M PE Growth Investment
Aug’19 – $35M Series D
Jul’18 – $20M Series C
Nov’15 – $6M Series B
Mar’15 – $8.25M Series A
May’14 – $3M Seed Round

–DEAL DETAILS–

Overview

Announced 6.5.25
No deal details disclosed

Post-Deal Operations

DICE to remain as its own standalone platform, but will incorporate Fever tech

Strategic Rationale

Margin expansion: own entire commerce funnel including media, experience, and now ticketing
Vertical integration: reduce reliance on 3rd party ticketing platforms, capture more value per transaction
Demand intelligence loop: uses audience ticketing data to predict trends, build events, and distribute them more efficiently
Distribution control: convert media-driven discovery into direct transactions
DICE to gain access to Fever’s discovery engine and global audience
Helps Fever expand its Europe footprint, and gain access to more live music experiences

–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–

Fever connects experience discovery with ticketing to curate demand-driven events aka a content x commerce flywheel. Fever started as a live events discovery platform, then used its aggregated audience data to drive traffic to their O&O media network, Secret Media. The media network helped build an audience and create traction for their own live events, and to also be dominant in experience discovery across large global cities. After acquiring Atom and DICE, Fever has extensive data on people’s desired experiences. Specifically, Fever can use the newly acquired customer data and intelligence to identify trending search terms and concepts that are gaining audience affinity. This will enable Fever to create more hyper localized events with high sell-through that it can promote on its media platform, and then monetize via its growing ticketing capabilities. Case in point, Candlelight events were developed from seeing an uptick in purchases for elevated date nights and concerts post pandemic.

This is Fever’s second ticketing platform acquisition in the last couple months. In March 2025 Fever bought Atom Tickets, a ticketing platform focused on cinema and entertainment-focused events, primarily in the US aka American moviegoers. In contrast, DICE is rooted in concerts, club nights, and culture across Europe, targeting a Gen Z and millennial audience. Together, Atom and DICE give Fever extensive coverage across both live and filmed entertainment in North America and Europe. Further, instead of previously partnering with ticketing platforms, these acquisitions allow Fever to own full margin and increase their bottom line.

Outside the major incumbents, ticketing is a fragmented industry and there’s more opportunity for M&A rollups. Ticketmaster (part of Live Nation) has over 70% ticketing market share in the US and exclusivity with many of the largest venues, and See Tickets (part of Vivendi), is a larger player in Europe, focused on culture and night life. There’s also other large players like AXS (part of AEG), and scaled self-service platforms like Eventbrite. But in niche verticals within music, comedy, culture, night life, immersive experiences, the ticketing landscape remains fragmented, particularly across global markets like Europe, Asia, and Latam. Therefore, there’s the opportunity for Fever to do more ticketing M&A within its focus areas in culture and night life, particularly for those platforms with mobile-first, data-rich ticketing with discovery and social features built in. All in support of Fever’s goal of creating an integrated discovery-to-ticketing pipeline.

This is part of a broader M&A theme we’re observing: the combination of media and non-media companies. Over the past few years, we’ve seen increasing M&A deal activity where non-media businesses buy media platforms to improve customer acquisition e.g. Robinhood, a fintech company, buying data visualization newsletter Chartr, or Wonder Group, a food services biz, buying food media publisher Tastemade (our deal analysis). The Fever / DICE deal builds on this trend, where a content and events discovery company significantly grew its media operation to better target and acquire customers, and use the acquired data to inspire the production of new experiences to sell to them. And then, after the success of the growth of its media business, is now using M&A to further expand into ticketing and event marketing capabilities to better monetize its audiences.
This makes us think of Spotify who in 2022 launched a standalone site (Tickets.spotify.com) where users could buy tickets directly through the platform. More recently in 2025, Spotify partnered with ZAIKO to give users direct access to tickets for J-pop, anime, and digital concerts in Japan. We expect to see more media x commerce deals like this, especially in categories where media companies have strong first-party data and high-intent audiences.

Capital infusion will fuel growth in experiences. Building and operating immersive experiences is capital intensive, requiring Fever to raise capital from investors like Goldman Sachs, L Catterton, and Point72. Expect Fever to continue to raise funds as they grow their O&O experiences network.

Fever raised $100M right before the deal was announced. These funds were used to finance the acquisition, and also planned growth for the combined companies.

I’m the founder of RockWater Industries. We do M&A and strategy advisory for creator economy and digital agencies. From buy / sell-side M&A and fundraising, to consumer research and go-to-market planning.

DM me on LinkedIn or email me chris @ wearerockwater.com