Sportel

I am on my way back from Sportel. The show is the largest market for sport rights in the world. Media right holders, TV broadcasters and sport organizations all meet to discuss rights. Around these meetings lots of service provides pitch their offering. Sportingo exhibited at the show for the first time and got a very good response from the market. Our push to create the most comprehensive guide for watching sports online is welcomed by an industry that is very fragmented. If you look at the total number of sport events run every week you will realize that even the largest broadcasters such as ESPN, Eurosport or Sky only show a fraction of all the sport out there. Sportingo’s What’s Online is becoming a central place for fans from around the world to find the sport media they are interested in. We will soon be announcing a number of exciting new partners and before the end of year will be realizing a new version of the site that will both improve our platform and the user experience for fans searching for media. We are also looking at localizing the service into additional languages, any suggestions on what should come first? French, Spanish? German? I would appreciate your comments.

More about London

It has been a month and a half since we relocated to London and I thought I would share some more of my experiences in the city.

It seems that we finally found a place to live, as simple as it sounds finding a place for a family of four is not that simple in this city. With so many neighborhoods to choose from and considerations in finding the right place the search got very complicated. For example I had no idea that we need to register our 3/12 year old to school now or we will not be able to get him into a good school in two years.

Everybody is obsessed with celebrity gossip and sports. The obsession for sport is a good thing for us and I can only appreciate the passion for the game now that I live in London. Once I move into our new home I will write more about this and about the whole process of choosing a team to support.

It seems that the whole media world is centered in London, the access to partners, clients and suppliers it wonderful. In some cases things take longer then I would like the to but that is the nature of working with large media partners.

Everything is so expensive. I am about to sub lease a small office for our London based team ( a basic room with four desks). The price for this room is going to be over 50% more then we pay for a large office that can fit more then 20 people in Israel.

We will be off to Sportel next week. This is the major sport conference of the year in which media right holder, sport federations and media companies all come together. A very intense few days, the only upside is the location in lovely Monte Carlo.

New round of funding

Today we announced a new round of funding from Ingenious Media. Ingenious is a top UK media investor (and have one of the most amazing offices I have ever visited) and will be helping us grow Sportingo and expand our UK presence. We raised a total of $3.2 million which should give us additional marketing resources and help in continue to develop the site. This is the 12 round of funding I have been involved with since starting my first company in the early 90’s. Every round is different and you end up learning a lot from the process and get ideas on how to improve your business. As a new company that is not profitable yet raising money is a very important event since it shows that the market values what you are trying to achieve. We need to remember that it is just one step that gives us more resources to continue and grow the company.

Thanks to all of the team who worked hard on the deal I would especially like to thank our lawyer Efrat that put in a lot of work (and is due to have a baby any day now) to finalize all the documents.

More about how we plan on spending the money and grow the company in my next few posts.