PlentyOfFish sold to American dating site giant Match for US$575 million

The Match Group, part of billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActive Corp., said it would buy online dating website PlentyOfFish in a deal valued at $575-million (U.S.), ahead of an IPO expected by the end of the year.

Sam Yagan, chief executive officer of The Match Group, said he had followed the domestic and global growth of Plenty of Fish “as one of the most popular mobile dating products in the world”.

PlentyOfFish was founded in 2003 by Markus Frind, who launched the company from his Vancouver apartment. Match Group has about a 22% share of that market.

The Match brands and PlentyOfFish both make revenue through a combination of advertising and paid subscription options.

The entirely bootstrapped company now has approximately 75 employees and over 90 million registered users, of which 3.6 million are daily active users. “As more people than ever use more dating apps than ever with more frequency than ever, PlentyOfFish’s addition both brings new members into our family of products and deepens the lifetime relationship we have with our users across our portfolio”, he said.

Match.com, IAC’s first matchmaking service, was launched in 1995. The deal is subject to approval from the Canadian minister of industry. Match Group also owns Tinder, Meetic and OKCupid, among other brands. The company has entered into a definitive agreement with Plenty of Fish, with the transaction expected to close early in the fourth quarter.

IAC reports having more than 370 million unique monthly users in total and more than 2.5 billion monthly visits to its entire portfolio of sites.

“I am confident that Match will help accelerate our growth even further”, added Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyOfFish, in another supporting statement.