Soap Central, the long-running U.S.-based website that helped launch a new era of soap opera coverage and fan interactions in 1995, has been acquired by Absolute Sports, one of the world’s leading tech-led sports and gaming media companies. The India-based company is a subsidiary of Nazara Technologies.
The acquisition, valued at $1.4 million, was first announced in early June and includes the Soap Central brand and all related assets, including the domain SoapCentral.com. The deal closed in early July and comes after Absolute Sports acquired a 73.27% stake in U.S.-based Pro Football Network LLC (ProFootballNetwork.com) earlier this year.
“The entertainment publishing industry is more than twice the size of sports publishing and allows us a great canvas for expansion into multiple content categories,” said Ajay Pratap Singh, CEO of Absolute Sports, in a statement announcing the acquisition.
“Having tested our content publishing and hyper-growth playbook with the acquisition of Pro Football Network last year, we are confident of scaling Soap Central in a very short time,” Singh continued.
According to a review of the new Soap Central layout, which is not yet live and remains in active development, the website will expand its coverage beyond the four remaining U.S.-based daytime soaps by also including daily recaps, spoilers and more for British soaps “Coronation Street,” “EastEnders,” “Emmerdale” and “Hollyoaks,” along with coverage of mainstream fare such as “House of the Dragon,” “The Boys” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), among other broad appealing entertainment content.
At press time, it was unknown if the website would continue to house its popular actor, character and birthday databases, which have become some of its most important core assets. However, in reviewing the new site layout, the core assets appear to have been removed. Further, the new website now resembles that of its new sister site, Sportskeeda.com.
Founded as the AMC Pages before rebranding to Soap Opera Central and later settling on its current name, Soap Central, the acquisition by Absolute Sports will reportedly see the exit of Dan Kroll, the website’s founder.