As Match readies to go public, its top competitor struggles

The highly anticipated IPO of IAC’s (IACI) Match Group (MTCH) is expected to price after the bell Wednesday with shares at $12 to $14 each.

But did you know there’s another more under the radar, niche online dating conglomerate that’s been public for nearly a decade? Spark Networks, which trades under the ticker symbol LOV, has been around since 1997 and went public on Valentine’s Day 2006 and has been a peripheral player in the online dating world. Its portfolio includes 20 personal interest dating sites like JDate and ChristianMingle -- its two most well-known sites -- as well as narrower-focused dating destinations like BlackSingles, SilverSingles and CatholicMingle.

Whereas Match’s properties include 45 brands like OkCupid, Tinder, and its namesake Match.com, Spark manages 22 dating sites and attracts “an audience that’s focused around faith and values,” according to CEO Michael Egan.

Match has 59 million monthly active users, 3.4 million of whom are regular paid subscribers, and reported $888.3 million in revenue in 2014, up about 11% from the previous year, according to a recent SEC filing.

Meanwhile, Spark’s growth can be described as lackluster at best, and dismal at worst: Its full year 2014 revenue was $61.6 million, an 11% decrease compared to 2013. Last quarter, Spark reported a loss of three cents per share, which is worse than analysts had expected. Egan acknowledges that the company has been in a bit of a slump, and claims that it is in turnaround mode.

The one bright spot? This quarter, Spark grew its subscriber base for the first time in two years. Still, that growth is modest: Subscriptions to Jewish dating sites were up only 1.8% from last quarter and subscribers to its Christian dating sites rose 0.4%. In total, the company has 198,000 subscribers.

Spark says it can attract an audience that’s more serious about settling down and finding a life partner. “Oftentimes our users have maybe been in the dating scene for a little while and are sort of exhausted with that,” Egan said. “We separate ourselves from a much more ephemeral dating experience which is really what Tinder solves for.”

On October 14, the company also acquired Smooch Labs, the owner of the popular Jewish dating app JSwipe, in an attempt to compete with Tinder.

Additionally, Spark is revamping JDate and ChristianMingle’s website design and content offerings. Despite Egan’s claim that it’s connecting spiritually like-minded individuals, he’s taking a more mainstream, less faith-focused approach, which aligns with Americans’ overall drop in religiosity.

Notably, ChristianMingle is positioning itself to be more secular, getting rid of heavy-handed biblical language in an an effort to appeal to a broader range of love-seekers. This could be an attempt to cut into Match’s market share, as it widens its target demographic.

“With the evolution of dating and the evolution of technology, our brands and our products have fallen behind times,” Egan said. “We’ve worked very hard this year to catapult back to the lead in terms of what we think is a fantastic product that allows for people to really find serious relationships.”

Egan remains optimistic about Spark’s future, but he’s open to the possibility of acquisition, though he says he hasn’t been approached yet. “If somebody came along and offered us something, we’d obviously take it seriously but we actually believe we’ve now got a platform and a team in place and two phenomenal brands that we can start to scale our business as a single entity if we wanted to,” he said.

Despite his ambitions, perhaps an acquisition by Match would be the best-case scenario.