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Increasing Match Group Valuation May Boost Founders’ Lawsuit

Match Group recently released its Q1 earnings, wherein the dating umbrella boasted a year-on-year revenue increase of 14%. The results may have implications for the ongoing founders’ lawsuit.

The average number of Tinder subscribers was up 1.3 million to a total of 4.7 million over the same time period. Match CFO Gary Swidler said “lots of little things” were being done to boost monetisation, and the stock climbed over 13.5% in the wake of the report.

The flagship brand’s success triggered $9.4 million in stock compensation for employees. Tinder was valued internally at $3 billion less than two years ago, but independent estimates now say it is worth around $10 billion.

Evidence of Tinder’s rapid growth in financial reports may support Founder Sean Rad’s claims against Match, as he asserts that the parent company purposely undervalued the dating app to avoid having to pay compensation to early employees.

Rad’s lawyer, Orin Snyder, said in a statement: “This report provides further evidence of what we’ve been saying all along — that Match schemed to cheat Tinder’s founders and employees out of billions of dollars.”

Justine Sacco, Match Group’s VP of Communications, said Tinder will not “disclose information on internal valuations.”

Cheddar reporter Alex Heath analysed the litigation in a short video available here. He makes the case that the increase in valuation is an “important tick-tock” in the ongoing battle.

Read more here.

Scott Harvey

Scott is the Editor of Global Dating Insights. Raised in Dorset, he holds a BA from The University of Nottingham and an MSc from Lund University School of Economics and Management. Previously he has written about politics, economics and technology for various online publications.

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