Russian-Born Playrix Billionaire Becomes International Booker Prize Sponsor

Russian-born billionaire Dmitry Bukhman, co-founder of mobile gaming company Playrix, has become the new sponsor of the International Booker Prize, committing £1.4 million ($1.9 million) annually for the next decade to support one of the world's most prestigious awards for translated fiction.

The Booker Prize Foundation said the award will be renamed the Bukhman International Booker Prize under the new partnership, which doubles the prize money for the winning author and translator to £100,000 ($133,000), up from £50,000 ($67,000), the Financial Times reported.

The long-term sponsorship comes at a time when arts organizations across Europe and beyond are facing mounting financial pressures, providing a significant boost to one of the literary world's leading awards for fiction translated into English.

The partnership “has the power to reshape not only the future of the prize, but the landscape of literature itself — elevating writers and translators whose stories connect us more deeply to one another across cultures, borders and experiences,” Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood told the FT.

The funding will come from Bukhman Philanthropies, the charitable foundation established by Dmitry Bukhman and his wife Daria.

Daria Bukhman told the FT that translated literature had been her “window on to the world” during her childhood in provincial Russia.

Dmitry and his brother Igor Bukhman, both natives of the northwestern Russian city of Vologda, began selling computer games in the early 2000s before founding Playrix in 2004.

The company went on to become one of the world's largest mobile game developers, producing hit titles including Gardenscapes, Homescapes, Township and Fishdom.

According to Bloomberg, Playrix generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2024. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the company briefly became the world's second-largest mobile gaming company by revenue after China's Tencent.

According to Forbes, each of the brothers has an estimated net worth of $13.6 billion.

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Bukhman brothers described the war as a "great tragedy" and called for an end to the conflict. Later that year, Playrix announced it would cease commercial operations in Russia and Belarus.

The company has been headquartered in Dublin since 2014 and operates studios in Serbia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Cyprus.

The Bukhman brothers hold British and Israeli citizenship and live in London.

Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times' Russian service.

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