Better Collective parts with £45m for Skycon to boost paid media division
Affiliate continues to action M&A pipeline with move for Newcastle-under-Lyme-based advertising specialist
Better Collective has acquired global display advertising company Skycon for a total consideration of £45m.
The affiliate giant has once again flexed its M&A muscles to acquire the advertising specialist, a British firm founded in 2017.
Skycon specialises in display advertising on channels such as sport media platforms.
According to the company’s website, it successfully acquired 10,000 new depositing customers in its first year of trading in 2019, with this figure jumping to 140,000 in its second year.
Better Collective plans to integrate Skycon into its existing paid media division, with plans to expand the platform to its global network of sportsbooks and a wider geographical reach.
The £45m fee includes an initial upfront cash payment of £25m followed by up to £20m in earnouts.
The earnouts are based on certain financial performance targets being hit in the 12 months post-closing period.
Following the acquisition, the Danish affiliate also upgraded its 2023 financial targets.
Full-year 2023 revenue has jumped to between €305m and €315m from a previous range of €290m to €300m.
Additionally, EBITDA expectations have been increased from €90m-€100m to a new guidance of between €95m and €105m.
Jesper Søgaard, Better Collective CEO, said Skycon would prove to be “highly synergistic” to Better Collective’s aims of growing its paid media division.
Søgaard said: “We have invested heavily in growing our paid media division to reach its current significant scale, while we also have invested in moving revenues to recurring revenue share contracts.
“Skycon is a great business, which is built on Better Collective’s favoured revenue share model. It is a perfect fit as we can leverage our leading skill set within media buying to grow Skycon’s revenues.
“We also see a clear path to further growth as the asset can be scaled across more of our business partners, into new territories and optimised with our unrivalled first-party data in sports media. This acquisition will further deepen our moat,” the CEO added.