E-football gaming community Futbin has finalised an agreement to be acquired by Better Collective AS in a move which looks to boost the firm’s esports media presence and related assets for €105m in a cash and shares deal.
Futbin, a ‘digital resource’ for players of the EA FIFA e-soccer game, has revealed that it has 50 million monthly visits on its website, with a further three million daily activities on its proprietary app.
“Esports is maturing and attracting more and more people globally – also professional athletes,” commented Better Collective CEO and Co-Founder Jesper Søgaard in a statement. “Acquiring Futbin and related assets is a clear testament to Better Collective’s ambition of creating a platform that reaches esports audiences across the world.”
“Even though more than 100 million people visit our esports platforms every month, we will continue to look for additional growth. We are very impressed with the high growth profile and the technology behind Futbin and the other assets in the portfolio. We expect to see significant positive synergistic effects with Better Collective’s business going forward.”
The acquisition of Futbin and related domains sees Better Collective expand its esports portfolio, in which the Stockholm-listed media publisher established its presence in 2020, acquiring Pan-European CS:GO community HLTV.org for €35m.
Deal terms will see Better Collective pay an upfront cash settlement of €70m, with a guarantee paid in shares from its existing corporate shareholding. The remaining €30m settlement will comprise performance incentives paid over a two-year period subject to financial performance criteria.
In connection with the agreement, Better Collective has updated its full-year 2022 financial targets, upgrading its 2022 EBITDA earnout to €85m from its previous guidance of €80m.
The updated forecast reflects the firm’s addition of approximately eight months of operational income from the acquired assets after the inclusion of ‘added costs to further develop the business’.
Better Collective maintains that wider financial targets related to organic growth and debt leverage will remain unchanged for FY2022 trading at 15-25% and <3.0x respectively.The deal aims to push Better Collective as a publisher in the esports media space in which “GlobeNewswire forecasts the esports market to continue growing with a 22% CAGR between 2022 to 2030, with ads and sponsorships representing the largest share of revenue”.
