Thousands of amateur sports writers across 13 countries "are using the 90min and 12up platforms from Israeli sports media and technology company Minute Media to produce, publish and share more than 15,000 pieces of curated interactive content in 10 languages every month," according to Abigail Klein Leichman of the JEWISH BUSINESS NEWS. Call it "the BuzzFeed of the sports world." The "precursor of Minute Media, FTBpro, was founded by Asaf Peled" in '11 in Tel Aviv. The company has raised a total of $45M in venture-capital funding. In June, Minute partnered with HT Media "to launch 90Min in India." Minute Media Growth & Content VP Matan Har said, "We saw a space in the global sports market for user-generated content and foresaw the way journalism was going toward the likes of HuffPost and BuzzFeed. We didn’t see anyone in the sports space doing this. And since we eat, breathe and sleep sports, it was a natural fit for us." 90min, its first platform for football citizen journalists in Europe, South America and Asia, "has more than 110 million users engaged through social media monthly," 70% of them under the age of 25. 12up was launched in May "as a media platform for fans of American sports." In private beta for two months, 12up "built up to reach more than four million unique users, mostly through mobile and mostly between the ages of 18 and 24." Minute Media President Rich Routman said that the addition of 12up "fills a void in the sports media landscape for fans and brands, especially given the scarcity of sports media brands that can deliver the millennial audience at scale." Platforms can "combine user-generated content with templates and resources including Getty images, YouTube videos and widgets to embed rich media content into their articles, quizzes, slideshows, videos, listicles and other multimedia content." Minute Media has offices in London, Tel Aviv, Singapore, and, most recently, in N.Y. and Miami. Minute Media "also plans to launch an esports brand" by the end of '16. Har said, "Hundreds of millions of people watch other people play video games, and we are going to cover the esports athletes of the world" (JEWISH BUSINESS NEWS, 7/5).
