Packer and Bassett buy into Scoopon
Investors including James Packer and Seek co-founder Andrew Bassett have taken a stake in the Melbourne company behind group buying sites Catch Of The Day and Scoopon.
According to today’s announcement, the company “has closed an investment for a minority stake in the company from New York-based Tiger Global Management and a group of leading Australian businessmen including James Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH), Andrew Bassat, co-founder and CEO of Seek and Glenn Poswell founder of Gannet Capital.”
Founders Gabby and Hezi Leibovich, will retain a controlling stake in the group businesses, with Lee Fixel from Tiger Global and Jason Lenga from Seek joining the board.
The deal is the latest multi-million investment in the rapdily growing group buying sector.
January saw Spreets acquired for $30m by Yahoo!7.
Although no value has been given for the latest deal, speculation earlier this month suggested that Packer would buy about 40% and value the compa y at $200m.
The announcement said that the new funds would be spent on launching in new locations and focusing on more localised deals. it would also go towards developing mobile apps.
Packer said: “Unlike many other players in the market, the team’s proven experience in building profitable e-commerce businesses, means they have the skills, supplier networks and economies of scale to keep growing and leading the market. We are excited to align ourselves with the market leader in the online daily deals sector in Australia.”
The company is also embroiled in a tradmark dispute with US-owned site Groupon, which trades as Star Deals in Australia because Scoopon registered the Australian Groupon domain first.
Consultancy KPMG advised the company’s owners on the deal.
The key players on the Australian group buying scene – including Hezi Leibovich and Spreets co-founder Dean McEvoy – will be particpiating in a session at next month’s Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney where they discuss the group buying business model. It will be the first time that the bosses of all the major group buying sites have shared the same stage.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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amazing these guys can get away with having the groupon business name here (and domain) whilst also competing directly against them.
and they get rewarded with some legitimate money from packer and bassett.
classy.
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@Logic Where’s your national pride? Keeping our businesses locally owned (and competitive) is a good thing, as well as warding off overseas companies taking the profits away from our local markets.
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wasn’t scoopon part owned by a US company?
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You can see why it’s such an attractive investment for Packer & co, just look at todays Scoopon deal!
http://www.scoopon.com.au/melbourne
Good on the Aussies for leading the way I say.
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Can anyone confirm that they are also aquiring a share of https://www.grouped.com.au ?? Something about Grouped launching a unique feature next month and they want to get on board.
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Good to see additional investment into the young and growing industry. This is great news for everyone involved.
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Good to see additional investment into this young and growing industry. This is great news for everyone involved.
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Excellent that these guys are being rewarded for all the hard work they have put into their sites. Don’t quote me on this, but as far as I am aware, Daily Deals has been on the scene far longer than recent players such as Cudo and laid the foundations for this growing segment. Nice work.
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Shows that there’s still plenty of potential in group buying – especially for those that create something more unique. I’d like to hear more about this Grouped.com.au offer if anyone knows?
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G’day dealer and Rob,
I think we have been sent about 10 emails with a link to this site asking what is going on! Firstly well done to the scoopon boys. They have grown very quickly and i have zero doubt they have even bigger plans going forward.
Secondly, Dealer congratulations on your website. The design work is brilliant- very impressive. In terms of us being bought out all or selling a share all I can say is that we have not held negotiations with Packer or Basset at this stage. We will however be launching a new feature late-June that we believe is an Australian first.
Cheers,
Dan
Grouped co-founder
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First off Scoopon are only new, their main site “catchoftheday” is just being leveraged by their new sister site. They have many complaints, do not look after their consumers, have a back log of orders, they have a very bad reputation compared to others who do a lot better job or looking after their clients. The fact that Packer and Basset have bought into them is a disgrace considering the alternatives!
Just do a search on “scoopon scam”
Now do a similar search for one of the others and you will find virtually nothing!
Scoopon do not have a support number, do not give refunds unless under duress and do not respond to support requests via email.
Personally I hope they go under and make way for companies like “Jump On It”
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