The Washington Postreports that Match.com is acquiring People Media, a network of over two dozen dating sites.
The deal includes the purchase of about 27 targeted dating sites with a combined 255,000 paying subscribers, including BlackPeopleMeet.com, BBPeopleMeet.com, LDSPlanet.com, SingleParentMeet.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com.
People Media, founded in 2002, had $11.6 million of EBITDA in 2008 and quotes Jupiter Research as saying the combined revenues of the targeted dating service business are expected to reach $1.2 billion worldwide this year. Still according to the announcement, People Media, besides exclusively powering multiple AOL Personals communities, reaches nearly 4 million internet users each month. Match.com attracted about 5.8 million unique monthly users in May 09 according to comScore and reported $9.9 million in operating income before amortization last year.
People Media also powers AOL Personals communities says the Post, which is where most of its unique visitors come from. It's not clear from the article whether Match.com will continue running all the Peoples Media sites as separate sites from Match.com.
The Washington Post 