GiG bosses say imminent acquisitions on ice as firm focuses on Time2play Media

Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) interim CEO Jonas Warrer has downplayed talk of impending M&A as the firm focuses on onboarding Time2play Media following the acquisition of the brand in December.

The affiliate announced the deal to acquire the brand, formerly known as KaFe Rocks, in November 2023 for a total of €35m, with the purchase completing a month later.

In its Q1 results, GiG reported the transition was going well with growth in revenue and a healthy EBITDA margin, particularly in North America, for the newly acquired asset.

GiG noted the business positively affected EBITDA for the affiliate division in Q1 2024 “to a more significant extent than previously anticipated”.

Speaking during Tuesday’s follow up call, Warrer said the affiliate is spending its time ensuring that process runs smoothly and that further M&A was not currently on the radar, but did not rule out future moves.

He said: “I think the trick when it comes to M&A is to do acquisitions that have a strategic fit with the organisation. There’s also the timing element.

“You can say we need to onboard KaFe Rocks fully and to excel together with them and then there would maybe be a bigger acquisition that we could consider again.

“I think there is a limit to how many acquisitions you can do in order to be successful, both in your existing business and in what you acquire.

“It is a very interesting market out there now for M&A [with] a lot of things happening,” the CEO added.

Despite revenue for the period being at an all-time quarterly high of €28m for GiG Media, a recent Google update negatively impacted several brands including Casino Tops Online.

In March, the search giant detailed several changes to come down harder on what it labels “site reputation abuse”.

Google defines this as “websites that have their own great content may also host low-quality content provided by third parties with the goal of capitalising on the hosting site’s strong reputation”.

Google continues: “Such content ranking highly on search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.

“We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam.”

Expanding on Casino Tops Online, Warrer said the platform had been “negatively impacted” by the update but that was offset by growth elsewhere.

He remarked: “We have initiated quite a big force now to turn things around here and to maintain the premium position of the website by delivering stronger value to the user.

“Then if we look at some of our other bigger sites, we can see that AskGamblers and Time2play really benefitted from the update. This is simply about maintaining the positive momentum for those two flagship sites as well.”