Zynga’s Most Lucrative Game: Charm the Investors

Sure, Zynga can persuade consumers to pay up for virtual sheep and the like. But those transactions are worth only a few cents at a time. To get the big bucks, it looks to investors outside the U.S., who are happy to cut the company some very big checks.

Last year, the Facebook-centric game company raised $180 million from Russian investor DST. Now it is set to raise $147 million more from SoftBank, Bloomberg reports. A person familiar with the company tells me Zynga hasn’t actually closed the deal yet, but seemed confident that it would. A Zynga spokeswoman declined to comment.