Saudi tech giant webook.com chooses Lisbon as European expansion launch pad
Webook.com, a leading technology platform in the entertainment, tourism, and experiences sectors in Saudi Arabia has announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Smartmove, a Portuguese company specialising in digital solutions for sports, ticketing, and fan management.
This operation marks webook.com’s entry into the European market and establishes Lisbon as a strategic centre for its operations on the continent.
From Portugal, the Saudi technology company intends to accelerate the expansion of its offering to sports clubs, event organisers, venues, festivals, and entertainment operators throughout Europe.
With over 30 years of activity, Smartmove is responsible for part of the technological infrastructure that supports ticketing, membership programs, and digital platforms for some of the largest Portuguese clubs, such as Sporting Clube de Portugal and Futebol Clube Porto, as well as the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) and Liga Portugal. The company also has consolidated operations in Brazil and other international markets.
The integration between the two companies will combine Smartmove’s experience in developing technological solutions for the sports and entertainment sector with the international scale of webook.com, which has already surpassed 17 million registered users in more than 180 countries and processed more than 25 million ticket bookings in the last year. webook.com’s infrastructure was designed for extremely demanding events, with the capacity to manage more than 2 million users in a single queue and ensure the issuance of more than 90,000 tickets per event with complete reliability.
This robustness will serve as the basis for the “Super App for Fun” offering in Europe, integrating events, flights, hotels, and restaurants into a single ecosystem. The effectiveness of this operation is already reflected in the signing of new agreements with clubs and major event organisers.
The investment will focus on strengthening the engineering team in Lisbon and developing cutting-edge technologies, such as anti-bot and anti-fraud systems based on Artificial Intelligence.
“The acquisition of Smartmove gives us something that isn’t built overnight: credibility and operational excellence at the heart of the European market,” says Nadeem Bakhsh, CEO of webook.com.
“We operate with the DNA of a Silicon Valley startup and are prepared to take the experience of booking live events and entertainment to a new level for both fans and organizers in Europe,” he adds.
António Precatado, General Manager of Smartmove, assures that: “We have earned our position by becoming essential to the operation of Portuguese football and other sports, from membership management to ticketing and access control on match days. With the support of the platform, investment and international network of webook.com, we can now take this successful model to clubs and venues across Europe.”
The operation comes in a context of increasing internationalisation of Saudi technology companies and reinforces Portugal’s attractiveness as a destination for foreign investment in high value-added areas, namely technology, artificial intelligence and the digital economy.
With this acquisition, webook.com strengthens its global presence and accelerates its expansion into some of the largest European markets for sports, live entertainment, and fan experiences.
Source: Supplied
