IGN has been sold to Ziff Davis, it has been officially confirmed. The mega site along with Ask-Men has been sold to the publisher who also owns 1UP.

Here’s a list of all the properties Ziff Davis owns: PCMAG.com, Geek.com and Toolbox.com, with IGN’s properties, IGN.com, UGO.com, 1UP.com and AskMen.com, make the group one of the largest digital publishers reaching tech, video game and entertainment enthusiasts.

They have also given advertiser details. The combined sites have over 600 advertisers and 53 million global monthly unique visitors. This acquisition more than doubles the revenues of j2’s digital media business.

“This is a transformative deal for our digital media business,” said Hemi Zucker, CEO of j2 Global.

“By combining two of the most storied organizations in tech, gaming and entertainment, we have created a very powerful company capable of producing and delivering content in all forms to an audience that marketers highly value.” Added Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, “IGN and AskMen are tremendous best-in-class brands that we are proud to have as part of our digital media portfolio.”

The transaction is expected to be accretive to j2’s 2013 earnings, exclusive of transition costs.

The interesting part is that once this deal goes through – which it will, since Ziff Davis made a cash offer according to PanoDaily – 1UP will be back to its original owner.

Ziff Davis sold 1UP to UGO Entertainment in 2009, which was picked up by IGN in 2011. IGN though, was purchased by News Corp back in 2005 for $650 million. Before you say, “Wow, what a loss”, consider the irony of 1UP going back to its original company.

Of course, Ziff Davis will also own GameSpy, AskMen, GameStats and the Vault Network among other entities when it purchases IGN. How will this impact the flow of content and competition? As always, time will tell. At least things will hopefully be more stable at IGN going forward.

Source: GIBiz