There’s something about soccer (and as a Brit, by that I mean football, puh-lease…) that seems to have captured investors’ imaginations of late. Case in point: FTBpro, a large fan-generated content platform, has now secured $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures to fund global expansion.
The site currently has 20 million monthly page views, over 1,000 contributing fan writers, covers all major leagues worldwide and publishes content and tools in a variety of languages.
FTBpro is not the only one. Its funding comes just after The Football App raised its first institutional funding — a €10 million Series A from a syndicate led by Earlybird Venture Capital in Berlin. The Football App has become a pretty dominant mobile football app amongst European fans.
On FTBpro, fans can publish and interact with each other and FTBpro’s editors. The site features match predictions, videos, imagery slideshows, team line-ups and player rankings amongst other features.
Based in London, with R&D in Tel Aviv, FTBpro’s business model is advertising and brand sponsorships. It works on Android or iOS, and the competition includes sports UGC players Bleacher Report (US), which was acquired by Time Warner Sports.
For its part, The Football App, which has 3.5 million monthly users and is up to 1.5 million daily active users, says it is adding 100,000 users a day across 155 markets and has high retention rates. They will use the funds to grow internationally.
More to come in this space, I dare say, as ‘second screen’ apps take off.