Predecessor(s) FTBpro.com Country of origin Israel | Headquarters London, United Kingdom Area served Worldwide | |
Available in English
German
Spanish
Italian
French
Turkish
Portuguese
Vietnamese
Thai
Indonesian Founder(s) Yuval Larom
Asaf Peled
Gilad Beiman | ||
90min.com is a technology-enabled football news platform, which produces Internet content covering various football leagues. The content offered by the platform is user-generated following the principles of citizen journalism. The first London based company website was launched in 2011 as FTBpro.com by Israeli entrepreneurs Yuval Larom, Asaf Peled, and Gilad Beiman.
Contents
History
90min.com was founded in late 2011, as FTBpro, by Yuval Larom, Asaf Peled, Gilad Beiman. Prior to 90min, Peled has worked for Cisco Systems for four years, while Beiman was among the founders of the Israeli Web portal Tapuz. The initial idea for the website came as the founders, all of them football fans, noticed that there was little investment in football-related start-ups. Shortly after its establishment the company raised $300,000 by angel investors including Shahar Erez and Boaz Dinte. In a second funding round in 2012 the company managed to raise $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures, stating that the funding would be used for the geographic expansion of the company.
Another $18 million were raised in 2014 by former investors Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures, as well as new investors including UK-based Dawn Capital. The funding was to be used for expansion to new markets, for the opening of new offices in Southeast Asia, and for the enrichment of the site's video and mobile content. Approaching the end of 2014 the website was renamed from FTBpro to 90min. The last funding round ended in October 2015, and it raised a total of $15 million. The round was led by German media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media, an investment that aimed toward the establishment of a joint venture targeting the German football market, also receiving funds from previous investors.
Services
90min has developed and provides an online platform that shares football related content for desktop and mobile devices, using video, text, listicles, slideshows, social round-ups and interactive polls as elements to create its articles. There is content creation on the platform in 10 different languages, namely English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian. The mobile application offered on Google Play and Apple iTunes Store allows users to customise the news they are getting from the website, in a way that, for example, could focus on the user's favourite team. The platform also allows football clubs to publish content from 90min.com on their websites.
The platform follows the concept of citizen journalism, which is also followed by American sports websites, allowing fans to create articles and other forms of multimedia content. In most cases content contributors create content on an unpaid voluntary basis, although there are some paid internships which cover article creation costs. An extra incentive for contributors is the website's content sharing agreements with The Telegraph, The Independent, GQ, USA Today, Huffington Post, and the Mirror, thus allowing the contributors to see their work published in well-established news providers. The website, which exceeded 30 million unique users per month in 2015, generates revenue via online advertising, with its clientele including the likes of Nike, Kia Motors, and Heineken. The company's services were offered, at the end of 2015, from its offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Manila.