Stags Participations and MI3 have taken minority stakes in the affiliate as part of a leveraged buyout aimed at expediting sports media growth plans.
The PE houses’ financial backing and structured debt from banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and BPI will be deployed to accelerate organic audience growth for Skores by increasing investment in products, content and expansion of its international brands. This strategy will “consolidate its position in the highly fragmented digital sports media market”, it said.
Skores Media co-founder Christian de Cailleux, participating in the LBO alongside the PE firms, said that with this transaction the business was “entering a new phase in its development, with the ambition of becoming a global player in online sports media.”
Managing Partner of Stags Participations, Grégoire de Castelnau, said: “[W]e are convinced that the Group's technological and editorial expertise, as well as its ability to capture international audiences, are all major assets that will make Skores Media a major player in the global digital sports information market.”
Jérôme Dhamelincourt, Executive Director of MI3, added that his business was excited “to be supporting a team of talented entrepreneurs whom we've been following from the very beginning”.
Skores, which employs close to 40 people across its Paris and Lille offices, also relies on an international network of sports fans, digital experts and nearly 100 local sports content contributors.
The sports affiliate’s properties, spearheaded by the Skores app and Sportytrader sites, currently attract five million monthly unique visitors and 60 million visits per month, as well as boasting a four million-strong social community.
Sportytrader’s localised versions have proved particularly successful in LatAm markets, consistently appearing among the top five affiliate sites in countries including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru, according to monthly tracking by iGB Affiliate's data partner DeepCI.
Skores Media won the Best Sports Betting Affiliate category in the iGB Affiliate Awards for two years running in 2021 and 2022.