London-based 850 Sports News Digest has secured $500,000 to help it in its bid to transform sports news for the mobile world.
The company’s editor-in-chief Neil Goulding believes that too often sports app “rely on aggregation, re-writes, content farms, or simply repurposing full web articles into the mobile format”. He said:
“Our approach is to use professional sports journalists to write succinct, content specifically for the app, ensuring a high quality experience for our readers.”
The 850 app delivers a quick, customisable daily news digest – at 10 to nine, hence the name – offering short headlines and shareable visual stats about the latest games. It launches with seven major sports, including football, cricket and rugby, and the team says this will rapidly to less mainstream global sporting events. The team is also hoping to let users contribute their own thoughts and predictions.
The seed funding has been secured from iBus Media Group, a gambling and gaming publishing company, representing its first external investment in this area.
Harlequins and England rugby player Nick Easter added:
“Love 850’s approach to covering Rugby, not seen anything like it on my phone before.”
850 Sports News Digest is available now on iPhone and Android.