Gamigo acquisition
MMO publisher taken over by Axel Springer.
September 4th, 2008
Axel Springer AG has taken over a majority stake of the online gaming provider Gamigo through its holding company AS Venture GmbH. It now holds 94.8 percent of the shares. AS Venture has been holding shares of Gamigo AG since 2000. Most recently it held 47.4 percent. The company is one of the leading German providers of -“Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG)”-, online games that can be played simultaneously by thousands of participants.
Dr. Jens Müffelmann, Director of the Corporate Division Electronic Media of Axel Springer AG explains the reasons for the transaction: “Gamigo operates in a fast growing market segment, it will quadruple sales this year and it is profitable. Due to that online gaming is to become an important pillar within the digitization offensive of Axel Springer.”
AS Venture took over the shares of bmp Media Investors. The remaining shares, amounting to 5.2 percent, are held by Gamigo’s CEO Sven Ossenbrüggen. With this transaction AS Venture holds from now exclusively majority stakes holding with Zanox, Idealo, Hamburg.de and Gamigo.
Over the course of the majority takeover by AS Venture the management board of Gamigo AG will be enlarged by Patrick Streppel, who, as project manager in the Corporate Division Electronic Media, had been responsible for the realignment of Gamigo.
The takeover has already been unconditionally authorized by the cartel office.
About Gamigo:
Gamigo AG is one of the leading and most experienced publishers and operators of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), which can be downloaded for free or distributed via magazine-dvd’s and are financed via subscriptions or the sale of virtual objects. Gamigo disposes of a portfolio of more than ten titles in four languages from the genres role play, strategy and sport. Some of these are: “Last Chaos” and “Fiesta Online”, the racing game “Level R” as well as the golf game “Shot Online”.
The games are already marketed successfully in co-operation with tiles of Axel Springer as well as with external partners, e.g ProSieben / sevengames.de und Giga TV / giga.de. For further information go to www.gamigo.com.
Press contact: Christian Garrels
Phone: + 49 (0) 30 25 91-7 76 51
christian.garrels@axelspringer.de
This press release is available at www.axelspringer.com .