eBay's rival in Australia is being acquired by Melbourne-based Jumbuck Entertainment. The move comes as eBay users in Australia protest the company's move toward a PayPal-only model. Auction site OZtion has seen a 50 percent increase in sales and said 28,000 new members have joined in the past 6 weeks since eBay's announcement, for a total of 275,000 members.

Jumbuck said it is acquiring OZtion for $1 million cash and $1 million in Jumbuck shares (escrowed for 1 year). OZtion founders Philip Druce and Kelvin Yip have committed to a 2-year management contract with Jumbuck.

According to Jumbuck's announcement of the deal, OZtion is on track to generate $1.2 million in revene for financial year 2008/2009, double the previous year and operates at break-even. .

Jumbuck provide wireless community and social networking services to mobile carriers, mobile users and the web. Jumbuck has agreements with more than 80 mobile telephone companies around the world to supply their mobile community products. Jumbuck is a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:JMB).

OZtion General Manager Philip Druce told AuctionBytes on Tuesday:

By partnering with Jumbuck we can grow OZtion even faster and provide great new services to our members. Jumbuck is a strong, highly profitable company with a strong management team and a track record for success and we will have access to their resources and people.

We have grown at a significant rate over the last 2 years and have built an amazing site, however, we needed to partner with a strategic partner in order to grow OZtion at an even faster rate and create massive awareness. Jumbuck have a huge community of users and they will help bring our service to many new buyers and sellers.

Comment on the AuctionBytes Blog:
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/6/1212494901.html

http://www.oztion.com.au/community/announcement.aspx

http://www.jumbuck.com