Big Win for Bigpoint...

Another win in the browser-based casual gaming market today as Bigpoint, one of the leading providers of high-quality browser-based entertainment, has been acquired today for around $110 by Peacock Equity and GMT Equity Partners. The site offers 20 multiplayer games as well as a range of flash based casual games, all for free. While many in the US market have likely never heard of Bigpoint, their numbers are impressive: Roughly 24 million registered users with 100,000 signing up every day, over 500,000,000 page impressions/month and over $30 million in revenues, growing at 100% a year. Online games and online gaming portals generally garner roughly $4.49/value per registered user and Bigpoint is achieving some very impressive figures relative to this number. Their effective CPM is roughly $5.17 (not including micro-transactions and subs) and their revenue per registered user appears to be roughly $1.28. All in all, the company is doing a solid job.

This deal is definitely on the large side of the year-old $250 million Peacock fund, which has previously invested in IGA Worldwide, a developer of in-game ads. The fund recently got its first exit in the sale of online ad network software firm Adify, which was sold to Cox for $300 million.

While the primary purpose of the capital raise is to help Bigpoint break into the US market and begin to compete, I thought the deal itself was very important as it validates the model of offering free, high-quality content in the browser and publicizes the success of browser-based games. The financial community seems to be accepting browser based games as the future of gaming, and my guess is traditional media companies continue to scoop up gaming properties as they try and diversify their offerings.