Global Personals calls in Sun Bingo man to lead online gaming offering

Leading online dating company Global Personals has appointed News International’s Pil-Jeong Oh to the newly created role of head of gaming, where he will be initially focussed on developing the company’s newly launched online bingo offering.

Pil-Jeong Oh joins Global Personals from News International where he worked for seven years as product manager in charge of The Sun and Fabulous Bingo-branded online bingo offerings.

In his new role, Pil-Jeong Oh will be responsible for Global Personals’s online gaming strategy, working closely with the company’s UX and Innovation teams to develop and grow the gaming arm of the business.

He will initially focus on the growth of SmoochBingo.co.uk, the Dragonfish-powered online bingo brand which was launched last year to complement the company’s leading freemium dating brand, Smooch.com.

Global Personals CEO Ross Williams said: “Pil will be a great asset to our senior team, bringing a huge wealth of gaming experience to the role. Online dating and gaming have similar demographics and there’s a lot of opportunity to utilise Global Personals’ expertise and resource into another burgeoning market, which will ultimately complement and grow alongside the rest of the business operations.”

The company added that it is also currently recruiting a number of roles for the gaming and development teams.

Global Personals was launched in 2003 and is now one of the largest privately owned online dating companies with annualised revenues of $74m. The company powers more than 10,000 dating websites for various partners across the world.

With offices in the US, Australia and Europe, Global Personals currently employs over 130 full time staff and last year acquired dating brand Smooch.com as well as freemium white label system WooWise, which it now operates as B2B business WhiteLabelDating.com.