Sports betting media company Better Collective has announced the acquisition of Futbin, a popular esports site whose primary focus is the FIFA series of soccer video games, in a deal valued at about $113 million.
Futbin’s website, dubbed by Better Collective as the “world’s leading esports brand” for the FIFA game series, currently fetches over 50 million page views monthly, and the company also fields about three million daily users on its mobile app.
According to details of the deal, about $75 million in cash and $5.5 million in existing shares will be paid up front, leaving about $32.5 million to be paid out over the next couple of years. The company said previously that it was making efforts to expand its resources and credit lines as much as possible to facilitate new deals, with this being the latest.
In a release, Better Collective CEO Jesper Søgaard said that esports is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, and that the recent acquisition of Futbin is a testament to their “ambition of creating a platform that reaches esports audiences across the world.”
This would appear to be an opportune time to acquire the FIFA-dedicated site, as their revenue in 2021 totaled about $14.1 million, an impressive 55 percent increase from 2020.
Even though the site isn’t gambling-oriented, Better Collective said it welcomes the addition as a means of revenue and asset diversification. The track record of growth and cutting-edge tech made the move particularly attractive, according to the company.
This isn’t the first esports-related move Better Collective has made–in March of 2020, the company purchased HLTV.org, a site dedicated to the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, for about $37 million.
In total, Better Collective aims to generate over 100 million monthly views for their esports assets, which may be reachable within the next two years or so given current projections.
