WALL STREET JOURNAL - Hinge recently added a plan at $50/mo, and is examining a plan for Tinder at ~$500/mo. Bumble is considering a tier above its $60/mo plan. Grindr plans to add more premium offerings. Match has made up ground, with revenue per payer rising in the past two quarters. Bumble reported paying users rose 20% to 3.6 million in its most recent quarter from a year earlier.
Match which will roll out a superpremium tier on Tinder in the fall. "If you actually take a small fraction of our payers at higher price points, you actually get a number that's in the tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis," CEO Bernard Kim said.
Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd sees premium services delivering new opportunities. "We see that there's a lot of runway to expand there."
Even if uptake is slow, there is precedent behind the move to raise prices. Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks, which helps online dating companies grow, said that other brands, such as eHarmony and Tawkify, have for years priced their premium services above what Tinder, Hinge and Bumble charged. The stakes are high in showing users that paying is worth it, Brooks said. Otherwise, they could defect to competing platforms. "They've got to actually really deliver on it, because they'll get crucified if they don't," said Brooks.
by Denny Jacob
See full article at Wall Street Journal
