Hit 'em with the read receipts... Dating legend Match Group owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and 20+ other e-romance businesses. As you spent #romantic nights in bed swiping, Match's full-year sales jumped an expectation-topping 17% (think: Tinder Gold subscriptions). But investors weren't swooning over Match's underwhelming forecast for 2021: the stock plunged 8% yesterday.
Love knows no borders... neither does Match's business interests. Match makes more $$$ internationally than it does in North America — and international users are growing faster. In Japan, Match’s second-highest grossing market after the US, sales have soared 600% over the last five years. Now Match owns the top two dating apps in Japan: Tinder and.... the opposite of Tinder.
- Pairs Engage: Match's concierge app designed to help Japanese singles marry within a year. The app suggests 30 potential husbands/wives each month. You get 90 days to decide if you want to exclusively date (no pressure).
- Pairs is trying to disrupt Japan's arranged-marriage industry, by offering a faster/cheaper way to get hitched.
Match is a dating lab... more than a dating company. It dominates online dating because of this (self-proclaimed) differentiator: an "ability to deploy learnings from across our portfolio" in new businesses. Match tests new concepts and strategies through different apps, then applies its learnings to its dozens of services. Think: monetization, video dating, and safety tools. It used strategies from Tinder to scale up Hinge post-acquisition. And it'll likely use learnings from Pairs to expand to other countries with arranged-marriage industries. Its soon-to-be public rival Bumble doesn't have that same breadth (yet).