New York-Based Amateur Sports Startup GameChanger Raises $6.8 Million Series B Financing
New York (PRWEB) April 05, 2014 -- Today, GameChanger Media announces it has closed a $6.8 million Series B round of financing led by Seattle-based Trilogy Equity Partners. Several existing investors, including Tenfore Holdings and Costanoa Venture Capital, are also participating.
The 30-person company, based in Lower Manhattan, provides a mobile and web platform to amateur sports teams and their fan communities.
Coaches use GameChanger for digital scorekeeping, stats, scheduling and communication with players, families, scouts and local media. Users replace paper scorebooks with the GameChanger iOS app, save hours once spent tallying stats by hand, gain better insight into player performance, and consolidate team logistics in one. The product is free for coaches and scorekeepers.
Meanwhile, team families and fans receive live scores and email updates for free, or pay to access premium fan content like the animated play-by-play “GameStream” experience or instant game recap stories for $7.99/month or $39.99/year.
GameChanger has differentiated itself in the amateur sports market by solving the hard problem of scorekeeping and stats, while engaging fan communities with content like live game updates. The addition of community management tools like scheduling and messaging has made it a one-stop shop for youth, high school and college teams.
Growth at GameChanger has been quiet but tremendous. Since 2010, over 150,000 amateur teams have scored 4 million games and 1.1 billion plays on its scorekeeping app. Its infrastructure supports massive scale, often scoring and streaming more than 50,000 baseball and softball games in a single weekend – the equivalent of twenty years of Major League Baseball. And it has partnered with the most respected brands in amateur sports including Little League Baseball®, Perfect Game, MaxPreps, Babe Ruth, USSSA, National Pro Fastpitch and the Ripken World Series.
The majority of the company’s new funding will go towards new hires in software design and engineering. GameChanger will be focused on adding more tools for coaches and fans of its existing teams, scaling its technical infrastructure and expanding into sports beyond its current baseball, softball and basketball offerings. John Stanton from Trilogy Equity Partners will join the company’s Board of Directors.
Said CEO and co-founder Ted Sullivan:
"Amateur sports communities have been underserved by the kind of simple digital tools that other markets take for granted. Scorekeepers still use paper and pencil to record game information. Coaches spend hours totaling stats and reporting to league administrators or the local paper. Fans that miss games can only hope for the occasional text update or post-game phone call."
"We think coaches and team communities deserve better, and we’re on a mission to help them be more efficient, informed and connected. This funding will help us build the team and products that will accomplish those goals."
Natalie Caldwell, Position Sports, +1 4806520097, [email protected]
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