As many as ten plaintiffs including Tinder co-founders are suing Match Group for $2 billion in damages.
What makes this even more bizarre (as some of you might have realised already) is that Match Group actually owns Tinder. The parent company is also currently embroiled in a lawsuit with dating app Bumble.
The lawsuit filed against Tinder owners IAC and Match Group claims that the firms robbed Tinder employees by lowering Tinder’s valuation and taking away stock options.
The co-founders presenting the lawsuit include Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, and Jonathan Badeen.
The lawsuit alleges that there were written contracts between IAC and Tinder employees that would see Tinder valued in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 according to a report by The Verge.
The lawsuit goes on to allege that IAC merged Tinder with Match Group, intentionally undervaluing Tinder and gave the employees fewer stock options that weren’t as valuable as the Tinder stock.
Further more, the suit claims that IAC created false financial information, lied about the growth of Tinder and stymied the release of features such as Tinder Gold to lower the firm’s valuation.
In a statement sent to Recode, Match Group said it had paid out billions in equity compensation to Tinder employees since it joined the firm.
“In respect to the matters alleged in the complaint, the facts are simple: Match Group and the plaintiffs went through a rigourous, contractually-defined valuation process involving two independent global investment banks,” said IAC.
“Mr. Rad (who was dismissed from the Company a year ago) and Mr. Mateen (who has not been with the Company in years) may not like the fact Tinder has experienced enormous success following their respective departures but sour grapes alone do not a lawsuit make. Mr. Rad has a rich history of outlandish public statements and this lawsuit contains just another series of them. We look forward to defending our position in court,” the statement concludes.
As it stands Match Group is now looking at two lawsuits from two different dating apps. Who would have thought dating apps could be so cut-throat.
