Catena seals deal for Squawka

Catena has continued its spending spree by agreeing to pay £1m (€1.1m/$1.3m) for Squawka, the global football news site.

Squawka, which attracts around four million unique monthly users, revealed last month that it was in financial difficulties.

Stockholm-listed affiliate network Catena, which recently agreed to buy Baybets, said it expects the Squawka acquisition to generate annual sales of approximately €2m, with an estimated 60% margin. Catena Media will add its knowledge in building successful affiliate sites to Squawka, which also has a daily fantasy sports (DFS) platform in beta testing.

It is felt the addition of Squawka will significantly boost Catena’s social media dynamics, as it gains a football asset with around 800,000 followers on Twitter and a Facebook group of 750,000.

Integration will commence upon completion of the transaction and it includes a team of four employees that will relocate to Catena’s London office and form part of its sports division.

“We see potential for Squawka as a high-volume traffic site with a global audience, to which we look forward to implementing an affiliation business model,” said Henrik Persson Ekdahl, acting chief executive of Catena Media.

“The company has invested in automatic data feeds for their user-friendly graphical interfaces, which is something we aim to integrate into other Catena Media products. Squawka will sit alongside our existing brands, increasing our coverage in the football vertical while entering the upcoming sports year.”

Catena also announced the acquisition of online poker news and traffic comparison website PokerScout.com in November.

Related article: Catena completes record acquisition of Baybets