Digital sports media company Perform Group has acquired football site Goal.com for an undisclosed sum to stride into the direct-to-consumer market (via PaidContent).
Perform will assume 100% ownership of the popular (and splendidly named) football community site, which logged visits from 19.4 million unique users in January 2011. The site was acquired from a consortium of investors, which includes Bessemer Venture Partners.
Perform says the acquisition will allow the company to rapidly increase both scale and reach in the global digital sports market to more than 95 million users a month. Goal.com boasts over one million followers on Facebook and is available as an application on iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
The media company says it aims to fully integrate Goal.com’s live sports data (GSM), video news (OMNISPORT), video highlights (ePlayer) and live streaming (LIVESPORT.TV) from its catalogue of over 40 different football leagues and competitions.
Perform says it will retain three key members of management. Michael Simpson, one of Goal.com’s original founders, will assume the role of SVP for Product and Content, Jonathan Gamble becomes SVP for Commercial and Sales and Scott Rothrock will continue as CTO of Goal.com. All three members will report to Simon Denyer, joint-CEO of Perform Group.
Since they put it that way specifically, I’m assuming that means Goal.com founder and president Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni, CEO Ron Elwell and CFO Brian Day will not be staying on. I’ve requested confirmation on that.