$441M LEGAL TINDER
Diller settles suit
Barry Diller’s Match Group plans to pay out a whopping $441 million over claims that it cheated the founders of Tinder out of billions of dollars, the company said early Wednesday.
The payment comes just days before jurors in a dramatic Manhattan trial were set to deliver a verdict in a suit brought by Sean Rad and other Tinder co-founders who were seeking as much as $2 billion. The weekslong trial saw heated testimony from Rad (upper inset), Diller (lower inset), former Match and Tinder
CEO Greg Blatt and a host of other witnesses and experts over claims that Diller’s company rigged a key valuation process.
Rad claims Tinder was unfairly valued at $3 billion because Diller allies shared “doom-andgloom” numbers with outside investment banks — and that the hookup app actually should have been worth at least $13.2 billion.
The payout announced Wednesday will settle both Rad’s state Supreme Court suit and several other claims in arbitration over the contested valuation, which occurred in 2017, according to a brief Match Group filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Match — which also owns Hinge, OkCupid and PlentyOfFish — said that money for the settlement will come out of the company’s cash on hand, which stood at $523 million at the end of the third quarter.
Thomas Claps, a Susquehanna litigation analyst who closely watched the case, said a settlement makes sense for both parties since juries can be highly unpredictable.
“It became clear that Match had a lot of problems that they had to confront in terms of repeated evidence of potential corruption and potential undue influence over the entire valuation,” Claps told The Post. “I think they decided to cut their losses because they could’ve been facing a much higher reward of up to $2 billion.”
As for Rad and the other Tinder co-founders, Claps predicts a party.
“By securing a settlement on their own terms for nearly half a billion dollars, I think they’re likely very pleased,” Claps said. “The plaintiffs could’ve rejected any offer and allowed it to go to the jury but there’s significant risk there because the jury could’ve gone to zero.”
Indeed, the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Orin Snyder and Josh Dubin, said in a statement to The Post that they were “very pleased that this valuation dispute has been settled.”
“It was a long and hard battle and our clients are grateful that they had the opportunity to have their voices heard and achieve this outcome,” they said.
In addition to Rad — who co-founded Tinder while working for IAC incubator Hatch Labs in 2012 — other early Tinder employees including Justin Mateen, Jonathan Badeen and Ryan Ogle are set to receive payouts under the agreement.