The Gamer CEO Trying to Level Up Dating Apps

The 48-year-old has spent his career in mobile gaming, apps and entertainment. Now he’s trying to convince users that dating apps are effective and that paying more for premium experiences in those apps will help them “win” by finding love. It is a new puzzle for the gamer with a competitive streak: As opposed to most mobile games vying to keep users hooked, dating apps are “designed to be deleted,” as the company’s own Hinge app motto goes. 

He’s facing a tough environment, from complaints of romance scams and online predators to a growing chorus of users proclaiming they are fed up with dating apps. Several activist investors, including one this week, have taken stakes in Match Group and are pressing the company for change, including a higher valuation, better margins and more innovation at Tinder, its largest dating app.

Kim, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is known to be creative and is constantly trying to outdo himself, say former colleagues and friends. For their annual holiday card, Kim, his wife and their two children appear as characters on what he has dubbed “Kimpire” (a riff on Fox’s “Empire” TV show), as “Kimnite” (instead of “Fortnite”) and as competitors on “Kim Game” (the “Squid Game” series). 

“He’s got his pulse on the zeitgeist,” says John Riccitiello, former CEO of videogame maker Electronic Arts. “You always realize that you’re 10 minutes less cool than he is.”

Kim took over at Match Group two years ago, after helping to pull off a turnaround at Zynga as its president. In addition to Tinder and Hinge, Dallas-based Match Group’s portfolio of dating platforms includes OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and the namesake brand.

Activist hedge fund Starboard Value this week disclosed a 6.6% stake in the company, as earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal. Match Group’s market valuation is now more than $9 billion. One of Starboard’s directives: drive product innovation at Tinder. 

“We believe BK’s experience in the gaming industry should provide transferable insights,” read a letter from Starboard. 

Match Group said it looks forward to an “open dialogue” with all investors as it focuses on growing Tinder, expanding Hinge and returning capital to shareholders. 

A native of New Jersey, Kim started working at Disney in 2004 as director of sales and channel strategy. Two years later, he left to become senior vice president of mobile publishing at Electronic Arts. 

Riccitiello credits Kim’s relationships for getting games like Bejeweled, Madden and FIFA into coveted featured games spots on phones.

“The initial business model for most mobile games was ‘You give me $10 and you own the game,’” said Riccitiello. Then came the push for “freemium” games, which are free to play but users pay for additional features. 

“That was both a highly controversial and very lucrative business model,” he said.  

At EA, a team would get together Wednesday mornings to discuss the latest games in development. Everyone was required to have sampled the games, recalled Barry Cottle, who was then executive vice president at EA Interactive. Kim, however, would have spent hours playing each game through multiple levels and had lots of notes. 

“I used to say, ‘When the gods came together and wanted to create the ultimate gamer, they created Bernard,’” said Cottle, describing Kim as driven to win, whether playing tennis or poker. Cottle said he has come to realize Kim is the ultimate consumer-experience executive. 

In 2016, Kim was playing Words With Friends on his phone against Frank Gibeau, Zynga’s newly installed CEO. It was in the chat function of that word game that Gibeau recruited him to join Zynga.

Kim had a knack for cultivating relationships that were key to international deals, said Phuong Phillips, who joined Zynga in 2017 as chief legal officer. She recalled him traveling to Finland to play tennis with the CEO of a company Zynga later acquired.

In May 2022, Kim was recruited to join Match Group as CEO and soon also became the acting boss at Tinder for nearly a year and a half. 

Tinder has long been the crown jewel of the Match Group portfolio. But Tinder’s paying users declined 9% in the first quarter from a year earlier. The company said it faced headwinds from weaker consumer discretionary spending, and analysts point to a lack of successful innovation to lure new users. 

The freemium business model is popular—and contentious—in the dating app industry, and users have complained about the pricey premiums. Kim said he looks back on his “Clash of Clans” spending with shame. Despite what gaming executives may say, no one plays a game forever, Kim said at a conference in March 2023. What did he really get from spending all that money? A wall that’s “not cool today,” he said.

But a dating app offers users the prize of finding “the one.” “That’s an immeasurable reward,” Kim said. 

Under Kim, Hinge and Tinder have added weekly subscriptions. Tinder also introduced a $500-a-month exclusive plan with perks like early access to new features.

Tinder is just one of the shake-ups in play under his watch. 

By the end of a three-day Match Group retreat in Mexico in November 2022, Kim had convinced the then-CEO of Plenty of Fish to move from Vancouver to Singapore to become CEO of Match Group Asia.

Match Group launched a dating app geared toward gay men called Archer in June 2023. Kim has said he greenlighted its development after several teams raised similar concepts. Competing gay dating app Grindr, founded in 2009, has experienced what analysts call a “rejuvenation.”

In recent months, Kim has tried to publicly rebut the critics. 

“There’s this false notion suggesting that dating apps don’t work,” he wrote in a New York Times letter to the editor, in response to a column suggesting the apps have gotten worse. “The numbers tell us that broadly speaking and for more people than ever: They work.”

Write to Sara Ashley O’Brien at sara.obrien@wsj.com