A former Fox and NFL executive is heading up a company that is trying to simplify the way consumers stream sports.
Adam Shaw, who resigned as
NFL Network’s senior vice president of distribution and marketing in 2007, is CEO and co-founder of
Sportle, a company that essentially acts as a search engine for all sports events that are streaming online.
Sportle launched via the Web last week as part of a soft rollout. It plans to have an app ready within six weeks that will allow users to find available mobile streams in one place.
Last Wednesday, for example, Sportle.tv provided streams of everything from the e-sports League of Legends and European handball championships to major college basketball and NHL games that appear on several different networks.
Once users click on a link, they go to the host broadcaster’s stream. For example, users who want to see the Providence-Xavier matchup were taken to FoxSportsGo, with Sportle keeping a banner over the top of the screen to help users navigate back to Sportle. If users are not authenticated to view the FoxSportsGo stream, Sportle will provide information on how they can become authenticated.
Because Sportle is sending users to their sites, Shaw expects TV networks to embrace the service — on the theory that it will add more viewers to their online streams. Sportle isn’t stealing those viewers; it’s directing them to the network streams.
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Sportle finds mobile streams for fans seeking sports events online.
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“We do not stream. We are not trying to be the online host for those games,” said Shaw, who has been working to bring Sportle to market since the spring of 2014. “We think the TV networks will view us as an important marketing partner. But until we can prove that, I’m sure there will be some initial skepticism.”
The thing that I find most interesting about Sportle is that it is being run by longtime industry insiders who have a lot of experience dealing with sports leagues and networks. This isn’t a few kids in their basement developing a service that the entrenched stakeholders will hate.
Sportle has eight full-time employees, including former Real Madrid executive Pedro Duarte and former MySpace executive Ali Tahmasbi. Digital media veteran Allen DeBevoise also is an investor.
Sportle has gone through two “angel” investment rounds that have raised in the mid to upper six figures each. The company is looking for an additional $2 million to $3 million in investments.
Sportle plans to have several revenue streams. It plans to sell featured placement marketing deals, akin to companies that buy Google search placements. It plans to take a cut of any transactional revenue of the consumers who pay for specific games. And it will provide opportunities for companies to sell relevant apparel and tickets from their site.
“As more games are being streamed, there’s no infrastructure in place for consumers to find the streams they want,” Shaw said. “It can be frustrating. But this allows sports fans to find what they want to watch.”
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
