Nazara subsidiary Absolute Sports buys entertainment news site SoapCentral for $1.4 million

Absolute Sports, a subsidiary of listed media and gaming firm Nazara Technologies, said it will acquire entertainment content provider SoapCentral.com for $1.4 million (about Rs 11 crore) in an all-cash deal.SoapCentral.com provides news and other content related to television shows and mostly focuses on the US audience. The firm made revenues of $621,000 (Rs 5 crore) in CY23, Nazara said in a statement.

“The entertainment publishing industry is more than twice the size of sports publishing and allows us a great canvas for expansion into multiple content categories,” said Ajay Pratap Singh, chief executive of Absolute Sports. “Having tested our content publishing and hyper-growth playbook with the acquisition of Pro Football Network last year, we are confident of scaling SoapCentral in a very short time.”

Absolute Sports also runs other content making divisions of Nazara, like sports news websites SportsKeeda and Pro Football Network, as well as entertainment news provider SK Pop.

ET had reported on March 13 that Nazara was setting aside about Rs 830 crore, or $100 million, for mergers and acquisitions in markets like India, Europe and North America.

After its results on May 25, founder and chief executive Nitish Mittersain had told ET that the firm was in advance talks for five to six acquisitions, including two or three gaming studio acquisitions for its new game publishing division Nazara Publishing, and a few acquisitions for its Sportskeeda, Nodwin and Datawrkz subsidiaries.

Over the past few months, Nazara has raised Rs 760 crore from a slew of investors like Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, SBI Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund and Plutus Wealth Management.In FY24, the firm’s revenue grew 4.3% year-on-year to Rs 1,138 crore, while profit after tax (PAT) from continued operations was 41% higher at Rs 89 crore.