June 9 (SeeNews) - Switzerland-based media company Ringier has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Bulgarian digital media group Sportal, executives with the target company announced in LinkedIn posts.
“Sportal Media Group offers the potential to further scale unique sports media knowledge and build further expertise within Ringier's existing digital media platforms,” Robin Lingg, the newly-appointed chairman of the board of directors at Sportal Media Group, said on Tuesday.
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The Swiss group announced the deal for Sportal, along with a majority bet on Bularian content management systems developer Digital Ventures, in the middle of March. The financial details of the transactions were withheld.
Prior to the deal, private individual Angel Shishkov owned 99% of Sportal.bg - the sports brand operated by Sportal Media Group, and 95% of Digital Ventures, according to data of the Bulgarian commercial register.
"Exciting times are ahead of us. Can’t be more proud from the entire Sportal team when looking back where we started, what we have gone through and where we are heading," Shishkov, chief executive of Sportal Media Group, commented in a separate LinkedIn post.
Sportal Media Group operates digital facilities in areas such as sports, news and politics, business, lifestyle, e-commerce. The most important brands of the group are Sportal.bg, a sports portal founded in 2006, as well as news platform Novini.bg.
Digital Ventures is active in the development of content management systems for the sports sector. The company owns Sportal365, a publishing platform for sports content that specialises in news, image galleries and videos, live statistics and live results from the sports sector.
In 2018, Ringier Sportal, a joint venture of Ringier Romania and Sportal Media Group, acquired Romanian sports brand Gazeta Sporturilor. The deal covered the acquisition of digital platform GSP.ro and the print edition of Gazeta.
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