Meetic

Online Personals Watch posted a short summary of an interview they had with the CEO of Meetic, Marc Simoncini. Among the things they discussed was the recent purchase of Match.com European operations (see Story). Currently Meetic in the UK runs the following dating sites; Meetic, DatingDirect and now Match. From the interview It looks like Meetic will be promoting only one brand per country or market. This means the Meetic dating site will be the only one of the three which is actively promoted in the United Kingdom. Will this affect DatingDirect and its membership numbers? Not really, since both sites look and function identically and they share the same member database. This means, if you sign up for one of the above mentioned dating sites, you really are then signing up for all of them as your profile will be available on all sites. On a related note, I am working on another article which I plan to further dissect how the large Dating Networks like Meetic work and if the end result is good for its members.

Here are a few more details from the eight year agreement that IAC (Match.com) and Meetic have:

1. Match has no right to manage the daily business in Europe. It will be managed by Meetic
2. There's a reciprocal right of first refusal for acquisition
3. And there will be two members on the board of Meetic, from IAC] Another interesting fact in the summary is Match Europe (not sure if this includes the UK) will have their member database merge with Meetic.

For the full interview of Marc Simoncini, check out Online Personals Watch

We wrote recently about Match.com selling their European operations to Meetic (see Story). For the sale we knew that Match.com will receive 27 percent share of Meetic plus a 5 million euro note. What we didn't know is, according to Ross Williams, CEO of WhiteLabelDating:

There was a clause in the announcement that didn't make many of the headlines, but I think will tell you the direction IAC is going in: Match has the option to buy Meetic in its entirety in about three years.

This makes things interesting. Before I knew about this piece of information, I had thought Match.com had decided to maybe concentrate on the North American market like everyone else. If Match.com has the option to buy Meetic then this makes more sense in the long run for the two companies. I could never see why Match had decided to get out of Europe since revenue wise they were doing well and, they have numerous other partnerships in places like South America and Asia (therefore they are not just concentrating on North America). If the sale does go through then, Meetic's CEO and founder, Marc Simoncini, will still be the main shareholder with over 20% and 36% of the voting rights.

Visit Mad.co.uk for the full article called Love is in the air.

Since the start of the global recession, online dating services in the United Kingdom have grown 13 percent (September 2008 - February 2009). A total of 5 million singles from the UK are now using dating sites. This is 13 percent of the total UK online population. Genders are split evenly and heavy use members were online an average of 4 hours per month viewing and average of 23 pages a day. 65% of UK online daters are 35 or older. The most popular dating site in the month of February was DatingDirect (owned by Meetic, 1.6 million visitors), followed by POF (with 1.4 million) and then Match.com (1 million visitors).

Read NewMediaAge for more information on the story. Visit our DatingDirect review , our POF review and our Match.com review for more information on these dating sites.

In a really surprising move (at least IMO), Match.com has sold 100 percent of their European operations to Meetic for approximately a 27 percent share in the company. Match.com will also get a 5 million euro note plus some additional terms which has not been released. Over the last several years it has been a battle between these two companies for the European online dating market. It looks like instead of trying to beat their competition, Meetic decided to buy them out and give Match an offer that was too good to refuse. Of course, with a 27 percent share in Meetic, Match.com will still have influence in online dating in Europe.

While Match.com tends to make more partnerships with companies to increase their market share internationally, Meetic tends to buy out their competition. Currently Meetic manages ten services, including Meetic, Meetic Mobile, Meetic Affinity, Lexa, ParPerfeito, DatingDirect, Neu.de, Cleargay, Partner.de and Lexamore. According to TechCrunch:

... Meetic had revenues of 153,7 million euros (close to $195 million) in 2008 and currently counts over 696,400 registered users. The company is public and listed on NYSE Euronext, currently valued at nearly 228 million euro ($289 million).

Meanwhile because of this deal, Match.com will go from having operations in 40 countries down to 24. The countries with operations now include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, Venezuela and Vietnam. As a comparison to the Meetic numbers in the above paragraph, in 2008 Match.com had revenues of $368.8 million with 1,347,300 paid members in Q4, 2008. It will be interesting to see the number of paid members reported once the European operations have been removed. Currently 13 percent of revenues come from Europe.

The partnership between Meetic and Match.com will take several months to complete. At this moment it is unknown how this may affect members at Match.com European dating sites.

On a last note, I have to say that I am still surprised by this move from Match.com. We just did a story earlier this month which showed that Match.com UK memberships rose 26 percent in January.