Recapp Wants To Be The Hulu For Your Sports News

Recapp wants to make it more convenient to read sports news curated around your favorite sports and teams. The iPhone and iOS app, which I saw in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley today, cracked the Top 50 in the App Store for sports a few weeks ago.

“Think of RECAPP as a Hulu or an iTunes,” Recapp’s blog reads. “You don’t go to all your favorite bands’ websites when you want to listen to their music. You use iTunes. And when you want to watch TV shows, you don’t go to the NBC website and then the ABC website. You go to Hulu.”

I tried out the app today, aggregating a stream of news about Michael Vick’s inability to consistently throw a football to his own team, and really liked it. It was markedly different from Pulse’s aesthetically pleasing, picture-centric display, yet addicting as I scrolled through articles about my favorite teams from ESPN, Sports Illustrated and even my own paper The Stanford Daily.

Co-founder David Chen tells me that he ran into basketball legend Bill Walton three months ago and Walton emailed him a few days later saying that he loved Recapp and used it every day.

Chen explains that as a sports nut, he was tired of going to ten different websites every day looking for fresh news, inspiring him to build Recapp. He argues that sports fans are inherently different users in the news they seek, differentiating his app from other news aggregators.

The company is focusing on gaining users right now; Chen says that existing users love the app and that 40% read it on a daily basis.

Once they have gained more users, Chen says they will focus on specialized brand advertising, comparing it to advertising at a baseball field.

“If you can do it in a matter that’s elegant, I think there’s a chance that it could be positive for both the user and the companies,” he tells me, explaining that the advertising goal will be to highlight brands in an arena where users are, not drive traffic.

The company will release an Android app in 6-8 months followed by a social platform where users can comment and like stories.

“This is only the first inning,” Chen says. “Eventually we want it to be a place for sports fans to connect. Kind of how like Instagram is for friends to connect over photos, we think this could be a place for fans to connect with their friends and other fans.”