Meetic takes over German Neu.de dating site

Meetic, the European leader in online dating, has signed an agreement for the acquisition of Neu.de, a major online dating player in Germany, and the Partner.de brand. This operation will be finalised in January 2008 for a sum of €25 mln, paid entirely in cash.

Founded in 2002, Neu.de currently has 26,000 subscribers and is the third largest online dating site on the German market, after Friendscout and Meetic, in terms of unique visitors (Comscore – October 2007).

An IPSOS survey in April 2006 and a Harris survey in November 2007 both placed Neu.de as the online dating site with by far the greatest renown in Germany, ahead of every other market player. Owned by Dirk Stroer through its Media Ventures subsidiary, ever since its creation Neu.de has benefited from a substantial offline presence on billboards.

Following this acquisition, the Meetic.de site and the Neu.de site will both be run under the Neu.de banner.
Partner.de will also be the brand under which the Group’s matchmaking site – Ulteem in other European countries – will operate.

Meetic manages nine services (Meetic, Meetic Mobile, Ulteem, Superlol, Lexa, ParPerfeito, DatingDirect, Cleargay and eFriendsNet) and markets two complementary economic models on the dating market, one based on internet use, the other on mobile phones. It is established in 15 European countries, as well as in Asia and Latin America, and is available in 12 languages. In 2006, Meetic posted sales of €78.8 mln and net profit of €10.1 mln.