uproar.com, an online entertainment
destination, Wednesday acquired iwin.com, a games-for-prizes and Internet
lottery site, in a deal valued at nearly $100 million.
Uproar will exchange 14.7 million of its shares for all outstanding Iwin equity.
Iwin.com, a privately held firm, officially launched last November.
The company backing comes from venture capital investors including Rader
Reinfrank & Co. LLC, Transatlantic Venture Fund and Ridgewood Capital.
Individual investors include Randall Kaplan, co-founder of Akamai
Technologies; Al Checchi, former chairman of Northwest Airlines; Richard
Janssen, co-founder of HomeStore.com; Howard Marks, chief executive officer,
Yipinet; and Kevin Wendle, co-founder, CNET and Fox Broadcasting Co.
As entrepreneurs lined up to get easy-to-remember domains, things got a little confusing. Iwin.com has no connection to Iwon.com, a portal which gives away cash and prizes to site visitors. Iwon.com has received a substantial amount of publicity since it launched last October thanks to its partnership with CBS Inc. which also has a major stake in the site.
The combination of electronic fun and games is a win-win situation for
all, according to Fred
Krueger, founder and chief executive officer, iwin.com.
“iwin and Uproar have very similar target audiences, but offer users
significantly different and extremely complementary content,” he said.
“Uproar’s strong multi-player games category blends perfectly with iwin’s
games-for-prizes and Internet lottery
content.
“Together, we are going to deliver a full spectrum of online
entertainment to a much broader combined audience. This is truly a win-win
proposition for our users, advertisers, and stockholders,” he said.
According to Media Metrix, Uproar ranked as the 38th most visited Web
property with 5.8 million unique users, and iwin.com ranked 59th with 4.7
million unique users in June 2000.
Media Matrix expects this transaction to increase
Uproar’s
user audience to approximately 9.2 million, which would
place it as the 20th most visited Web site on the Internet.
