Fandom, backed by TPG, buys the gaming e-commerce platform

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, which was funded with a combination of cash and shares. U. K-based Focus Multimedia also has a product-oriented company that helps people learn to drive, which will remain among the selling shareholders.

San Francisco-based Fandom, originally known as Wikia, was acquired in 2018 by Integrated Media Co., an internet media investment firm backed by private equity firm TPG and led by veteran digital media veteran and former News Corp executive Jon Miller. . According to someone familiar with the matter, the deal at the time valued Fandom at more than $ 200 million.

Fandom, which is profitable, expects to generate $ 200 million in revenue this year, according to people who know the subject. This would continue the business’s trajectory of increasing revenue by between 40% and 60% each year since its acquisition by Integrated Media, according to People.

Founded in 1995 as a mail game distributor, Focus Multimedia launched the business that became a fan in 2012. Fanatical now offers a catalog of more than 8,000 digital games, e-books and more than 1,000 e-learning courses. publishers and developers.

This background to getting people to pay for games and other products will accelerate Fandom’s own efforts in creating direct trade revenue streams to the consumer, said Perkins Miller, Fandom’s chief executive.

Fandom says it has 150 million users who come to Fandom.com every month to check out its content, which includes information about games and characters, as well as tips and tricks for gamers. Its games-focused e-newsletter, which launched in the fourth quarter of 2020, has more than a million subscribers and is about to reach 3 million subscribers by the end of the year, according to the company .

Adding a trade item through Fanatical allows Fandom to sell games and related merchandise to users who have shown interest in it, according to executives.

“The idea is to close the loop of fan interest in a transaction,” said Miller, CEO of Fandom.

“Even more interesting is getting them back,” added Stephanie Fried, Fandom’s director of marketing. “Part of the value of Fandom is to help people love the things they love most. But once they buy this game … we can help them discover the next game and go back down the conversion funnel to buy them. “

Digital media companies have been working to diversify their revenue as Alphabet Inc

Google and Facebook Inc.

they have aspired to an increasing share of spending on digital advertising.

“In today’s environment, there’s a lot of power to having a deeply engaged audience,” said Andrew Lipsman, chief analyst at research firm eMarketer. “The last era of digital monetization was about scale: mounting Facebook and Google to increase audience size, but much of that audience was a mile wide and an inch deep. The pendulum swings. the one from the scale to the depth of the commitment ”.

Fandom itself has paid revenue streams with trade and subscriptions through D&D Beyond, a digital tool provider and distributor of the popularly popular Dungeons & Dragons desktop role-playing game.

According to its CEO, Fandom expects its revenue streams to be evenly distributed across advertising, business transactions and subscriptions over the next two to three years.

Focus Multimedia is the third acquisition of Fandom since it was purchased by Integrated Media. The company is studying more deals, especially in companies focused on video and audio creators, Miller said.

“We think we can do more to outdo the fans,” he said.

Write to Sahil Patel to [email protected]