Andrew Miller thinks there’s a big mistake that sports media properties are making these days: they’re all giving social platforms like Facebook and Twitter their best content for free. “They’re getting their lunch eaten,” he says, by letting top writers put most of their best content—analysis, opinions and breaking news scoops—in tweets that don’t bring any money to the employer.
It isn’t a brand new insight. And many news outlets producing content for Facebook (FB) or Snapchat say that even though it directs traffic away from their own site, it raises a publication’s profile and helps with that oh-so-elusive sense of brand buzz.
Miller, CEO of the Boston-based website Football Nation, wants to break out of the cycle by getting writers and readers to submit original content (mainly live video) to his site, and not to Twitter or Facebook. To that end, Football Nation has acquired the assets of Fancred, a much-hyped mobile sports app for user-generated video that shut down earlier this year.
Fancred launched in 2013, raised $4.5 million in venture funding (led by Atlas Venture, an investor in DraftKings), got Red Sox slugger David Ortiz to promote it, and amassed hundreds of thousands of users, until it hit a wall and closed its doors this year. Football Nation has bought what is left of Fancred, including the rights to its brand name, for an undisclosed amount, Yahoo Finance has learned.
Competing with Facebook and Twitter on video
So, what is left of Fancred? For starters, 100,000 users on its mobile app (even though Fancred has zero remaining employees and isn’t updating the app). Football Nation didn’t have a mobile app. And while Fancred wasn’t just for football content, 75% of its user base was around the NFL.
In addition, Miller says, “We acquired a live-video product built by incredible technologists that was the reason they got all their money. It really puts us in the same playing field as Facebook Live, Twitter and Snapchat.”
That may sound overly ambitious, but Miller is betting on hardcore football fans. Football Nation launched in 2012 as a blogging platform where amateur sports bloggers could get their work published; some of its early contributors have gone on to full-time writing gigs at more mainstream publications. Over time, it transitioned to a larger news hub covering NFL and NCAA football, with community contributors and paid writers creating posts on everything from fantasy football to breaking news to trade rumors.
Football Nation has made a variety of acquisitions, buying sites like FFChamps.com, ColdHardFootballFacts.com, and FantasSpin.com. It also has a weekly live program during the NFL season, “The Fantasy Football Champs,” that runs on Football Nation and on Patriots.com and is sponsored by DraftKings. But buying the bones of Fancred is its biggest move yet and will re-shape the platform, focusing it on video.