The opposite day I learn this attention-grabbing article that I couldn’t cease fascinated about. A girl wrote an article within the Atlantic during which she mentioned she’d been kicked off of hinge for violating some rule they by no means clarified to her, and regardless of a ton of effort to reverse it, spent largely speaking to nobody as a result of nobody replies, she was principally off.
That sounds tremendous. Like so what — huge deal. Bars block folks from coming again once they’re out of line too, so what’s the massive deal?
Till you understand that Hinge’s father or mother firm is owned by Match company, and whenever you get kicked off of Hinge, you get kicked off all their platforms. Bumble, which I as soon as heard somebody from Hinge name it “the one which bought away”, stays impartial, however Tinder, Hinge and lots of others are all owned by one agency.
Given the truth that on-line courting is the modal method that folks date and discover companionship, be it causal or hoping for one thing extra, you begin to understand that getting kicked off hinge actually means getting ejected from the trendy matching market solely. It might be like getting right into a combat on the patriots sport, getting kicked out of the entire patriots video games completely, in addition to all NFL video games, all NBA video games, and most Main League Baseball video games as nicely.
And that’s as a result of on-line courting platforms are like this big vacuum cleaner pulling all contributors there, and as soon as it sticks, it’s an equilibrium and stays one. Barring the electrical energy grid shutting down civilization, I don’t suppose it may be unearthed due to the extraordinarily highly effective community externalities that platforms have.
Which would appear to indicate that perhaps Match is a monopoly. Positive, there’s different apps than simply hinge, however they’re owned by the identical conglomerate, and if penalties on one to all of them, then it makes you surprise what to consider individuals who is perhaps ejected not simply from the positioning, however from all websites, and due to this fact perhaps a lot of the related matching markets solely.
So I informed Claude Code I wished to see extra dependable authentic knowledge concerning the gamers within the on-line courting market, and in addition to see the market’s evolution over time, in addition to earnings. I used to be curious what I may discover out additionally concerning the dept of justices curiosity in corporations and markets like these, if any, and if none, why? So that is what I discovered.
All of those knowledge have been crawled by Claude Code and generated figures have been produced in python.
The figures are constructed from the audited monetary filings of the three publicly traded courting firms: Match Group, Bumble, and Grindr. I truly thought Match owned Grindr earlier than doing this. I knew Bumble was not, although, as a result of I as soon as heard a Hinge worker name it “the one which bought away” as a result of they’d been unsuccessful in buying it.
Match Group was pulled from their 10-Ok and 10-Q filings on EDGAR going again to their 2015 spin-off from IAC, which is once they first began reporting as a standalone entity. Bumble’s numbers begin in 2021, the yr of their IPO, and Grindr’s begin in 2022, once they went public by way of SPAC. So the panel is unbalanced on the early finish, which is unavoidable as a result of these firms merely didn’t exist as public reporting entities earlier than these dates.
For Match Group I’m separating out Tinder and Hinge income from the remainder of the portfolio (which is OkCupid, Loads of Fish, Meetic,
The acquisition historical past, which isOkCupid in 2011, Meetic in 2011, Loads of Fish in 2015, Hinge phased in 2018-2019, comes from the press releases and 10-Ks on the time of every deal, cross-checked in opposition to contemporaneous reporting.
The HHI numbers I report are computed off income shares of those three corporations, which is the usual DOJ method for a market this concentrated. I need to flag the apparent caveat which is that this treats “courting apps” as a single market, and it ignores personal gamers. I’m not sure of this defensible but it surely’s what I’ve performed.
However even with beneficiant changes for personal opponents, you don’t get out of the “extremely concentrated” vary the DOJ pointers flag for scrutiny. The market sits between roughly 4,600 and 5,600 on the HHI by 2018-2024, and the edge for “extremely concentrated” is 2,500. We’re almost double that.
So right here’s what I’m confused about: how can this market be so concentrated and it haven’t gotten the eye of the division of justice?
The brief reply is that they’ve gotten away with it due to how antitrust legislation treats “zero-price” markets.
There’s truly an NYU Regulation Assessment article from 2019 by Evan Michael Gilbert titled “Antitrust and Dedication Points: Monopolization of the Courting App Trade” that lays out the issue instantly.
The DOJ and FTC have largely not scrutinized mergers in zero-priced industries as a result of customers don’t “pay” for Tinder or Hinge within the conventional sense (the free tier is the product). And since the usual shopper welfare framework appears for worth will increase after mergers, it doesn’t flag it. Match acquired 25+ firms in a decade with basically no merger evaluation.
The FTC has gone after Match, however just for shopper safety stuff. For example, they only settled in March 2026 over OkCupid sharing hundreds of thousands of person images with a facial recognition startup with out consent (no monetary penalty). And there was a $14M settlement in 2025 over misleading subscription practices and making it exhausting to cancel.
However neither of those is about market focus. No one’s asking “ought to one firm personal Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid,
The underside line is that Match has managed to keep away from antitrust scrutiny as a result of courting is considered inconsequential and never severe sufficient to warrant regulation.
However this market is inconsequential provided that you suppose companionship and relationship formation is low-stakes. In the event you take significantly that >50% of {couples} now meet on-line, and one firm controls ~65% of that market, then that is vital social infrastructure being monopolized. The truth that the DOJ hasn’t acted looks like a regulatory failure, however I’m nonetheless fascinated about this.
I might want to confirm these HHI and income calculations in some unspecified time in the future, however earlier than then, let me simply say that it’s so attention-grabbing to have the ability to get a lot knowledge at any level by merely dispatching Claude to go get it. From my telephone! Astonishing.
