Game Lounge, Catena Media, XLMedia and Gambling.com affiliate acquisition spree

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game-lounge-slottracker-affiliateNordic online gambling operator Cherry AB’s affiliate marketing subsidiary Game Lounge has acquired online bet monitoring site Slottracker.com.

On Monday, Cherry announced that Game Lounge had reached a deal to acquire the Slottracker operation from US-based Innovative Game Solutions Partnership. The deal requires Game Lounge to pay €1m, with an additional payment of €300k should Slottracker achieve certain objectives over the next two years.

Slottracker allows players to track their online casino activity across multiple sites, including games played, bets made, winnings or losses and bonuses paid, with the idea of determining which site delivers the best bang for the buck for a player’s personal activity patterns.

Game Lounge CEO Jonas Cederholm said he looked forward to working with Slottracker’s developers to craft “new features that allow each player to gain more control over their gaming.” Cherry CEO Anders Holmgren suggested these new features would appear on Slottracker this year, and he believes the acquisition will “complement Cherry’s value chain.”

AFFILIATE ACQUISITION A-GO-GO
Cherry’s bolt-on is but the latest in a series of affiliate deals in recent weeks, including affiliate powerhouse Catena Media, which added to its December acquisition of German-facing Baybets Ltd by adding the affiliate-related assets of Dreamworx Online Ltd, a major German-facing operator specializing in sports, casino and financial services.

Catena has agreed to pay €9.5m – €4m in Catena shares and €5.5m in cash – for the Dreamworx assets, which include Sportwettenanbieter.com, Fussballwetten.info and DeutscheFXBroker.de. The assets are expected to generate quarterly revenue of €600k with an operating margin of around 80%.

UK-listed digital performance marketing firm XLMedia recently agreed to pay €15m for Finnish gambling affiliate Good Game Limited. The Finnish operator, whose websites include Nettikasinot.com, Veikkausbonukset.com and the new Bojoko.com, reported revenue of €1.7m with a 75% earnings margin in its most recent fiscal year.

Last week saw Gambling.com acquire a primarily UK-facing mobile performance marketing network developed by Sabin Brookes and Mike Webb. Gambling.com estimates its new casino and sports betting marketing assets will generate revenue of €400k in Q1 2018 with a pre-tax profit margin of 90%.

In exchange for joining the Gambling.com team, Brookes and Webb will receive £3m upfront, plus a potential maximum earn-out of £4.5m based on hitting certain performance benchmarks over the next 12 months.

Gambling.com CEO Charles Gillespie welcomed his new developers and called the deal “a rare opportunity to do an acquisition of a business that actually innovates and has defined a new segment of the market.”