In the UK, the summer of 2012 is already being looked back on as the British summer of sport. It kicked off with a traditionally poor performance by the English football team in the Euros, followed by a much more successful Olympics and Paralympics held on home soil. All three events were a national and televisual spectacle, but it would seem that the second screen saw plenty of action, too. And so did fanatix, the mobile-first social network for sports fans, which is touting some encouraging growth and, carried by that momentum, is today launching in the U.S.
The UK startup has also revealed that it’s raised a second round of funding: $1 million from an unnamed group of angel investors, bringing the total raised to around $2 million. The new capital is being used to fuel the company’s expansion across the pond — conquering America isn’t cheap. In the U.S. (and elsewhere) fanatix faces plenty of competition, both dedicated mobile social apps for sports fans, such as PlayUp, SportsYapper, SportStream etc., and more general second screen apps like Zeebox or GetGlue.
Similar to much of the competition, fanatix’s iOS app lets sports fans ‘check-in’ to sports events where they’ll see a personalised stream of related content – news updates, Tweets, video clips, live scores and statistics. But where the app appears to have got the second screen experience right is its “huddles” feature, which enables sharing of content in groups, a form of group chat dedicated to a specific sporting event, such as a football match. Fans love to swap banter, and replicating that social experience on the second screen is a no-brainer.
To that end, fanatix says that its average user is now accessing the app an average of four times a day, so not just during live events, while the app has been downloaded 250,000 times since it launched in October 2011, claiming a daily active user base of more than 35,000.
As for the U.S. launch, it’s being timed to coincide with a whole bunch of sports events across the pond that I don’t pretend to understand (or care about), such as “the World Series, the NFL at the midseason mark, the 2012-13 NBA season, and college football bowl season,” according to the press release. But whatever — as of today, American sports fans have a new second screen experience to load up on their iOS devices and another place to talk smack.
fanatix is a social platform for sports. The platform makes it easy to discover relevant content and share it with friends and other fans.
PlayUp is the first global mobile-based social network dedicatedto live sport. The service provides live scores and key statistics for over 36,000+ live games a year. This includes World Football Leagues, Cricket, Basketball, Baseball, Australian Football, Rugby, Hockey, Olympics and more. PlayUp connects live action to sports fans by providing hangouts both public and private for fans to share their experiences, opinions and talk about the game. Now with more features that ever before - Version 3.0 delivers a range of content including...
zeebox is a companion app and website for watching TV. zeebox analyses the context of live television and uses that to aggregate stuff from the web that is relevant to what consumers are watching on TV. zeebox integrates live TV with social networking, information augmentation and e-commerce experiences. It enables consumers to buy what they see on screen, share their TV viewing habits with friends, and engage with more information about their favourite shows. For broadcasters, zeebox makes TV...
GetGlue is a social network for entertainment. Users check-in and share what they are watching, listening to and reading with friends; get fresh recommendations, exclusive stickers, discounts and other rewards from their favorite shows and movies. GetGlue is a recognized leader in social television and second screen applications. As of Jan 2012, GetGlue has 2M users that checked-in over 100M times in 2011. 75 major networks and 10 movie studios use GetGlue to promote their shows and movies to fans. Based...
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