Dating-app acquisitions and shutdowns, 2022–2026: who got bought, and who died

The "who owns what" picture of the dating-app industry looks like a fixed map, but it's been redrawn repeatedly. Between 2022 and 2026 the consolidators kept buying, one stable changed hands entirely, a well-known app lost its independence, and two brands didn't survive at all. This is the moving version of our ownership map — what changed, in order, and what each move tells you about where the industry is heading.

The timeline

Two forces are visible in that table at once: acquisition at the top, attrition at the bottom. Take them in turn.

The buyers kept buying

The clearest pattern is the consolidators adding brands. Match Group — already the largest player by revenue — picked up The League in 2022 (a rare deal with a disclosed price, $29.9M) and the Muslim-marriage app Salams in 2023, the latter quietly, only surfacing in a February 2025 disclosure. Both fit Match's long-running strategy: buy defined-audience apps rather than build them, and run them alongside the big swipe brands.

The biggest structural move, though, was in Europe. ProSiebenSat.1, a German media group, took 100% of ParshipMeet in March 2025 by buying out its co-owner, General Atlantic — pulling a whole stable of brands (eharmony, Parship, ElitePartner, LOVOO, and the former Meet Group apps MeetMe, Tagged and Skout) fully under one owner.

A note on what we don't claim: most of these deal values are not public. We give The League's $29.9M because it's documented; we do not state a price for Salams, happn, or the ParshipMeet buyout, because those figures aren't disclosed in the sources we trust. (Why we flag missing numbers instead of estimating them is its own piece: the dating-app numbers that aren't in the filings.)

The other side: brands that didn't make it

Consolidation has a quieter second face — not every brand gets bought; some simply close. Spark Networks, the operator behind Zoosk, Jdate, Christian Mingle and SilverSingles, entered insolvency in January 2026 under its financial-sponsor owner. A few months later, in April 2026, EliteSingles shut down outright.

This is the part most ownership write-ups miss. They map who owns whom today and treat it as stable, when the more honest picture is a field actively thinning out — by purchase at one end and by failure at the other.

The holdout worth knowing about

One move in this period was a deal that didn't happen. Muzz, a Muslim-marriage app, declined a Match Group offer and stayed independent. It's a small detail with an outsized point: the independent tail of the dating market isn't just apps too small or too obscure to acquire — some have actively chosen to remain independent rather than fold into a consolidator. That's part of why the "one company owns everything" framing doesn't hold up.

So is the market a monopoly now?

After all that buying, it's tempting to conclude one giant runs everything. The acquisitions are real, but the answer is still no — and we score it three different ways (by app count, by revenue, by users) in does Match Group own 80–90% of dating apps?. The short version: Match Group is the dominant force by revenue, but Bumble, Hello Group, ProSieben/ParshipMeet, Grindr and a real independent tail (including holdouts like Muzz) keep it well short of an outright monopoly. Consolidation has narrowed the field; it hasn't closed it.

The takeaway

From 2022 to 2026 the dating-app map moved in both directions at once: Match Group added The League and Salams, ProSieben absorbed all of ParshipMeet, MOMO took happn — while Spark Networks collapsed into insolvency and EliteSingles shut its doors. The field is more concentrated than it was, by acquisition at the top and attrition at the bottom, but a determined independent tail (and at least one company that turned Match down) keeps it from being a single-owner market. We keep the live ownership picture current on who owns what, and flag every deal value we can't source rather than guessing it.