While a segment of fans participate in fantasy sports leagues, most stay up to date with their favorite teams simply by reading news online. FanIQ, a new web site for sports enthusiasts, seeks to make this routine more social and interactive, introducing trivia, forums and other applications to bring users closer to the game. Based in San Francisco, the company just announced an undisclosed round of funding -- its first since an angel round in fall 2007.
Right now, the site has 8 million registered users (with 40,000 signing up every day) and draws about 5 million unique visitors a month, according to VentureWire. When users sign up on FanIQ, they provide a host of information that the site uses to deliver relevant content. The startup says this gives it a leg up over competitors -- even goliath ESPN.com -- because they know their users better, including their favorite teams, etc. Most sports news sites have large anonymous readerships, and miss out on tailoring content to their interests, FanIQ says.
Beyond that, they miss out on the advertising opportunities that come with knowing an audience inside and out. By collecting such specific data, FanIQ says it will provide advertisers with endless options for targeting their products and services. This sounds like a pretty good plant, but by the looks of it (the homepage is absent of ads), this advertising strategy has yet to take off.
The company says the recent round of financing will be used to continue developing the site's features. One of the next projects is to introduce an online betting system where users can wager online currency in various online games.
The recent round of funding came from Point Judith Capital.