By Petre Barac

Copyright thediplomat

Resource Partners, a leading private equity investor in Central and Eastern Europe, announces the acquisition of an 82.5 percent stake in iaBilet, Romania’s leading online ticketing platform, and a 55 percent stake in BestMusic Concerts, a promoter of live entertainment events. The transaction marks Resource Partners’ entry into the high-growth digital ticketing and live entertainment sector.

The investment kicks off a new phase of accelerated growth and platform expansion for iaBilet. Backed by Resource Partners, iaBilet is set to scale up its digital infrastructure upgrades, broaden its service portfolio for promoters, and elevate the ticketing experience for millions of users.

Founded in 2012, iaBilet began with the mission to bring together Romania’s live events into a single, digital platform – simplifying ticketing for users and professionalizing the experience for promoters. Today, iaBilet processes tickets for over 2,000 events per day and serves as a guide to Romania’s entertainment landscape. The company’s fully proprietary platform combines ticketing, marketing automation, and real-time analytics, allowing both major promoters and independent organizers to manage and grow their events seamlessly.

BestMusic has played a major role in shaping Romania’s live music scene, bringing top international acts to Romanian stages and building a loyal fan following along the way.

Gosia Bobrowska, Managing Partner at Resource Partners, stated: “We are long-term believers in the Romanian market, which continues to offer highly entrepreneurial businesses with regional potential, and iaBilet is a great example of that. From the outset, we were impressed by the company’s edge and ability to build strong trust with both organizers and audiences. As a consumer-focused investor with deep sector knowledge, we see strong growth prospects in the live entertainment and digital services space and are excited to support the company’s next stage of development.”

Miruna Popa (photo), Investment Manager at Resource Partners, added: “We’re excited to mark our second Romanian investment in the last two years. iaBilet is a category-leading business, deeply embedded in the local events ecosystem and trusted by both promoters and end-users. Our focus now is to enhance the digital experience for all stakeholders – offering organizers better tools, expanding value-added services around events, and making ticketing more seamless and rewarding for users. This is a strong local champion with real regional potential, and our vision is to support iaBilet in becoming a next-generation ecosystem for live events.”

The deal follows more than a decade of growth for iaBilet, which processed over 4 million tickets in 2024, powering events for more than 3,000 promoters and achieving a turnover of €5.8 million.

Emil Ionescu, CEO and Co-founder of iaBilet and BestMusic, commented:“We’re incredibly proud of how far iaBilet has come, and we’re ready to take it further. With Resource Partners’ support, we will continue building tools that give organizers more autonomy, improve event visibility, and give customers better access and flexibility. This new partnership will help us serve the live events community even better, while staying true to our values of accessibility, innovation, and reliability.”

The platform recently launched daBilet.ro, Romania’s first secure ticket resale service, and is developing a new suite of digital tools to help event organizers manage their sales, analytics, and marketing more independently and efficiently.