The CEO Of Tinder And Hinge Spent $50,000 On An Addictive Video Game

Match Group CEO Bernard Kim is a Clash of Clans fan.

Many of us have started playing an addictive mobile game and, before we knew it, linked a credit card and started purchasing perks and extra lives against one’s better financial judgement (hello, 2010 Angry Birds fans!).

Sometimes this stops at a few bucks a month but can also often turn into a money-draining addiction. In 2022, consumers spent $110 billion on various types of mobile games and gaming apps. While this is a 5% drop from 2021, many personal finance experts have been speaking out about how the games are designed to rope in and keep you spending.

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But few people have the cash or credit limit to spend $50,000 on games. That is how much the head of Match Group  (MTCH) - Get Free Report, the parent company behind dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, says he dropped playing Clash of Clans over the course of three months.

Here’s How The Head Of Match Group Spent $50,000 On Mobile Game Perks

“I’ve personally spent $50,000 in three months in Clash of Clans, and I still look back at that with lots of shame,” Bernard Kim said at the New Street Research online dating summit. “I’m like ‘oh my God, what did I really get out of that experience?’”

The money, Kim said, went toward building a “really amazing wall” — launched in 2012, Clash Of Clans is a Supercell-developed game that puts one as the chief in charge of building a Medieval-style village.

The admission came as Kim was responding to a question about the differences between dating apps and mobile games. Mobile games, Kim said, are designed to keep the user playing for as long as possible instead of “winning” and leaving the app after finding a relationship — even if users eventually also grow bored and move on from mobile games.

“No one plays these games forever,” Kim told the journalist and attendees. “After a certain point, people churn out of a game experience.”

This Is What’s Happening With Match Group In 2023

Kim is relatively new as the leader of Match Group — he was appointed in the spring of 2022 after the announced departure of then-CEO Shar Dubey.

The company has had a lot of turnaround as, a few months later, Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg unexpectedly left after taking over from Jim Lanzone as its first female CEO the previous September. When Nyborg joined, many saw her as the person who would help apps like Tinder chart a new course amid accusations of sexism.

At the start of 2023, the wider Match Group reshuffled executives and moved Gary Swidler from COO and CFO to President and CFO of Match Group. Will Wu was brought in as Match Group’s Chief Technology Officer while Malgosia Green went from heading Plenty of Fish to being CEO of Match Group Asia.

Stock has also been on a tumultuous ride and is currently down 12.40% year-over-year and 33.87% since the start of 2023. The wider company has been struggling both amid high executive turnaround and the need to craft a new course.

“We are not seeing a similar surge of activity in 2022," Kim told investors after a worse-than-expected earnings call in reference to the surge of dating app downloads that occurred during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.