THE NORDICS

The past 18 months has seen a ramping up of M & A activity in the gambling affiliate space, with Nordicfounded and managed companies the main protagonists. Scott Longley delves into the dealmaking activity by the likes of Catena, GIG, RakeTech and others, which only looks set to continue rising in 2017.

THE M & A MOVES IN the operator and supplier space understandably dominate the headlines, but an equally significant process of consolidation has been underway in the igaming affiliate world.

And going by the news that has appeared to date this year and regular exchanges with affiliate contacts, the pace of change is likely to quicken in the coming year. But first, a recap of recent events.

Privately owned affiliate network RakeTech announced it had raised € 70m in funding in order to fund future acquisitions; then Catena Media, a leading Stockholmlisted affiliate consolidator, released news of its latest buyout, the € 8.6m acquisition of Swedish-facing affiliate Slotsia.

Finally, Oslo-listed Gaming Innovation Group( GIG) announced its affiliate arm had bought an unnamed affiliate network for € 3.5m, following that news up a week later with the announcement that it had secured a SEK400m(€ 42m) bond, the bulk of which would go towards further deals in the affiliate space. On 10 March, it announced its largest affiliate acquisition to date, of Casinotopsonline. com for € 11.5m.

These moves come on top of an already busy period of M & A in the affiliate realm involving not just the aforementioned firms but also XL Media and Cherry Gaming.

As can be seen from our tables, iGaming Business has tracked at least 33 deals within the last three years involving these businesses alone, and this doesn’ t include a dozen deals in the past 12 months mentioned by RakeTech in its fund-raising news.

The dealflow, if anything, is speeding up and the amount of money involved in each individual buyout would also appear to be on the increase.

Deal sizes in the low single-digit millions of euros just one or two years ago are now

Figure 1: XLMedia gambling affiliate acquisitions

rising into the € 10m-plus territory, and in the case of Catena Media’ s recent buyout of the US-based PlayNJ business, up to a potential US $ 45m if earnout targets are reached.

PROPERTY DATE FEE + EARNOUT MARKET FOCUS Scandi / Danish network July 2014 $ 2.3m Denmark UK sports betting site August 2014 $ 2.3m UK MarMarMedai June 2015 $ 7.36m Unknown

Figure 2: Catena Media affiliate acquisitions

PROPERTY DATE FEE + EARNOUT MARKET FOCUS Finix Invest November 2014 $ 6m Scandinavia LJFK Ltd March 2015 Unknown Netherlands Promo6000 March 2015 Unknown Norway Stay Media July 2015 $ 2m Sweden Arctic Marketing August 2015 $ 0.3m Finland Cornvinus August 2015 $ 0.65m UK La Luna September 2015 $ 0.45m Netherlands Good Game September 2015 $ 1.5m Finland

38 iGB Affiliate Issue 62 APR / MAY 2017