Motain, the company behind The Football App, a popular service that brings all manner of information to football (soccer) fans, has announced a big signing of its own, after landing a €10 million ($13 million) Series A round. The investment is led by Earlybird Venture Capital.
The Berlin-based company says that the funding, which is its first to date, has been raised primary for The Football App. The new capital will be used to increase its flagship service’s global presence and user base ahead of the upcoming World Cup, which takes place in Brazil in the summer of 2014. That focus will see it expand beyond the six international languages that it currently supports.
The four-year-old service is a must-have treasure trove of details and news for any fan of the beautiful game. Serving a range of content that includes statistics — league tables, scores and fixtures — news and videos from more than 100 leagues across the world, the app has racked up 6.5 million downloads across iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms.
The service counts 3.5 million monthly active users (of which 1.5 million are active per day) and generates more than one billion page impressions per month. Growing at a rate of 100,000 new downloads per day, it is available for free with ads inside it, or users can buy a ‘season pack’ — priced at £2.49 ($3.80) in the UK — which delivers an ad-free service for the duration of the domestic season.
“We’ve so far bootstrapped the company and built an incredibly loyal user base of mobile football fans. With the recent explosive growth rates, especially from all over Europe, we realized the potential to build the leading digital football community as a space to inform, connect and engage interested parties around their passion for football,” said Motain co-founder and CEO Lucas von Cranach.
Hendrik Brandis, partner at Earlybird, said that the service is on course to “dominate” the lucrative mobile football content industry, which is estimated to number 300 million users by next year. “They’ve simply built the best product” Brandis added.
If, like me, you have football fever coursing through your veins, you’ll be wanting to get hold of the app, which is available via the links below.
➤ The Football App: iOS | Android | Windows Phone
Headline image via Shutterstock
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