Minute Media, parent company of popular London-based soccer website 90min, this week will debut a new U.S.-focused sports and culture online and mobile destination called 12Up.
The new outlet will target young, male millennials and will operate on a socially driven, user-created content platform, a strategy that recalls the model employed in the early days of Bleacher Report, before Turner Sports bought it in 2012. 12Up will seek to cover a variety of on-field, off-field and lifestyle sports stories.
Rich Routman, formerly a senior executive with XOS Digital, Silver Chalice and Perform, is leading the 12Up initiative. Minute Media recently hired Routman as its president.
Minute Media has released a 12Up mobile application. The 12Up name references the 12th Man as the voice of the fan.
“Millennials don’t want to hear from [Sports Illustrated and TheMMQB.com’s] Peter King. They want to hear from their own audience,” Routman said. “We have very big aspirations for this and believe we can be a truly differentiated offering in tone and voice. I’m not looking to get to 3 million, 5 million monthly uniques. I want to get to 20, 30, 40 million uniques.”
Such a total, if it were to happen, would typically rank among the top 10 U.S. digital sports outlets.
90min, formed five years ago in Israel, last week formally reorganized itself as the Minute Media holding company, with other content brands in development for India and Germany beyond the U.S.-focused 12Up. The company’s properties reach 45 million global unique visitors. Minute Media has garnered $45 million in funding, including a $15 million round last fall, and investors include Dawn Capital, an early backer of FanDuel.
“With the formation of Minute Media, we can focus our growth on new markets and into new sports where we can continue to bring in the best content, in the most scalable platform, to users around the world,” said Asaf Peled, Minute Media founder and chief executive.
Bleacher Report’s initial reliance on user-generated fan content created several breaches in which questionable material was published. Routman said 12Up intends to employ a layered editing structure in an effort to avoid similar issues.
Debut sponsors for 12Up have not yet been disclosed.
