Sportingo is a sports news and analysis site that mixes fan written original content and blog content from off site with licensed sports statistics, schedules and professional photography. It’s modeled after and developed with assistance from the successful South Korean site OhMyNews (English version) and Israel’s Scoop.
Initially focused on European football and tennis, Sportingo offers users a comprehensive content management system to upload their original writing that then gets edited by a team of Sportingo editors. The company’s editors write headlines, fix grammar, approve tags for consistency, apply search engine optimizing metadata to each article, attach relevant statistics and photos licensed from outside vendors and determine placement of the stories on the Sportingo site. Editors can use easy forms to add, remove and place elements from templates in each story. Reader interaction with each story will also impact the placement of stories. Betting odds on matches and sports news are displayed because people find them interesting, no betting goes on via Sportingo. The revenue model is entirely based on advertisements.
The nine person company was founded by Tal Barnoach and Ze’ev Rozov, who previously lead a sports multimedia encyclopedic DVD company that went public in London in 1996.
Sportingo is very similar to what South Korea’s OhMyNews has done with world news. That site has been so successful that after the site’s coverage was recognized as some of the most important media activity around the last Korean presidential election, the newly elected president did his first post-election interview with OhMyNews. The Sportingo team worked with OhMyNews and Israel’s Scoop in developing the editorial process for their sports site. Sportingo asks for more personal information at registration than many people are accustomed to, but that’s an effort to tie journalism to real peoples’ identies. OhMyNews goes even further, requiring that contributors scan and send in personal ID.
In addition to original writing, Sportingo pulls in selected blog posts from off-site, highlighted forum discussions submitted by managers of top sports forums and breaking sports news from Reuters. The company plans to license streaming broadcasts of live sports events, to launch localized versions of the site in Spanish and other languages and hopes to develop teams of user contributers focused on covering breaking news so professional content can be de-emphasized.
User contributors develop reputation through reader ratings of their stories, with status levels starting at Rookie and moving up to being in the Sportingo Hall of Fame. High status contributors will gain privileges like private meetings with athletes and editorial control over their own sections of the site. Unlike many similar sites, there’s no revenue sharing plan for contributors. Speaking of similar sites, several people in comments have recommended checking out Fannation as well.
I think this is awesome. From sports to personal finance and investing, there are a number of startups right now trying to bring structure to topical and prolific segments of the blogosphere, but Sportingo’s investment in editorial control and outside resources that require professional development could really offer users a chance to participate in a very compelling sports journalism community. We all know about the many shortcomings of mainstream media, but the pitfalls of pure user generated content are becoming more evident as well. This kind of hybrid is quite intriguing.
I’d like to see a hybrid professional media/user generated site like this for college-specific sports and news.
Oh joy.. another social network…
I wish we had a few more of these. I can’t get enough of them.
you should check out http://fannation.com. it has these features and more.
The hybrid model is interesting but I don’t know how successful it will be with Sportingo. There are so many sports blogs out there and I don’t know if the value offered by Sportingo to sports bloggers like myself is compelling enough.
Their terms require you grant Sportingo an “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid-up, worldwide license to use, copy, modify, edit, publicly display, digitally perform, and distribute such Content and to prepare derivative works of and/or incorporate such Content into other works.” That’s fairly standard and not unreasonable, but
the FAQ is conflicting and very troublesome: “Once an article is submitted to Sportingo you agree to transfer the copyright for that article to Sportingo. The Sportingo editorial team has the right to make any changes it sees fit before publishing it on the site.” Granting a license is much different than giving them copyright. As a writer, you’d have to be crazy to do this for no compensation. The conflicting information on the site leaves me unimpressed with Sportingo’s legal grasp of intellectual property for a venture of this nature. In either case, since writers are not compensated, is there enough incentive to move from Blogger or my own Wordpress blog? The best bloggers out there often receive paid offers to join blog networks or media outlets.
I think including Reuters content is a mistake. This is a commodity, and you can find this at any major sports news site. If you go to the homepage now, you see a Reuters story as the headline, which in the blink of an eye gives me no idea that this is in any way significantly differentiated from any other mainstream sports news site.
Sportingo is competing for attention with mainstream sports sites (ESPN, etc.), individual sports bloggers and sports blogging networks. In fact, this looks like little more than a souped up blogging network with a Web 2.0 design and some “professional” editing services, which means little to sports fans.
I think the business model – advertising – is uncompelling, especially for a nine person company, which seems quite high for this type of venture. Sports media is a highly saturated online market so I doubt this is differentiated enough to gain the significant traction it needs, making the advertising potential fairly limited.
It also looks like they face the chicken-egg problem. There’s not much content there now, and based on the level of reads, comments, etc. doesn’t look like they have much of an audience, providing even less incentive for a successful blogger to come over without payment.
All in all, I’m not impressed with the business model or value proposition, and the conflicting statements over IP don’t build any confidence either.
@rvr: it looks like fannation just regurgitates content from the mainstream media services (ESPN, FOXSports, newspapers). I don’t need help locating content about my favorite teams. It’s already very easy. Seems like a solution looking for a problem.
fannation is way too web 2.0. it’s cluttered and complicated and the AJAX nearly crashed my browser searching for my favorite NBA players. It seems like everybody is just applying the web 2.0 “model” to every niche without any understanding that web 2.0 design/features/etc. don’t appeal to that niche.
On sportingo this might work but I agree that it is basically a sports blog network with a little twist.
Hi Sports Blogger,
Thanks for your comments about our site. We went live last night and over time we will address several of your key concerns.
We offer a lot of value to capable sport bloggers by providing another platform for the content to be published (see the articles from Caughtoffside http://www.spor...g-mess/1001,283) and access to resources that few bloggers can afford such as tie in to statistical databases, schedules etc (all should be working in about a week). You bring up a good point regarding the confusion with the IP rights and I will recheck the wording on the site to clarify the inconsistency. We went back and forth about licensing third party news feed from Reuters and I eventually decided to add the feed as a way to make sure that a sport fan will also have access to breaking news. My concern is that if I only use content from our writers, third party blogs and fan sites it could take several hours until we can respond to a live event. Having the Reuters feed enables me to give up to date news until I can replace the article with original content. I will have to see what type of reaction we get to the Reuters news feed and see if I make the right decision or if we should take it out.
i thought the http://www.fannation.com site was very interesting. arrington, how did you miss reporting about this one? it looks web2.0 – but it is intergrating some very cool features. funded by the same guys that funded newsvine???
Fannation does look interesting. Little blog coverage of it so far, looks like it could warrant a review. Thanks!
skeptical, i would have to respectfully disagree. fannation is doing a lot more than just regurgitating news (a disclaimer: i am a fannation employee). we are aggregating a lot of news, with the goal of providing one place to find a depth of sports news that’s hard to find elsewhere. we are also starting to bring blog content into our aggregation engine to extend the breadth of what we offer.
beyond news, we offer user blogs, groups with message boards, friends, site messaging, stats, scores, fantasy news and tools, and we’re just starting to launch our first games. we have a pick’em game for the nfl season that just went up.
it’s true that we have a lot of features, and trying to keep the site uncluttered is a challenge. we’re continuously trying to improve the site and refine the features, and we’re excited about some of the things we have on deck.
no site is going to be perfect for everyone, certainly, but we feel like we can put together features that will satisfy a lot of fans, from casual followers to hardcore fantasy nuts.
skeptical, i don’t know how much time you spent on the site, but i encourage you to go deeper and see what you think. we’d also love to hear about any issues with the ajax or anything else. our goal is to make the site as usable and stable as possible.
so thanks for the feedback, both positive and negative. we everyone will at least check it out and give us more input.
@rvr: I did go deeper. There’s some cool stuff, but I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s because I’m not fantasty sports oriented and your site seems to have that focus somewhat. It will definitely appeal to those people, although there are sites like rotoworld and I don’t see much activity as far as real fans go. Most of my online sports activity is around message boards and your message boards look pretty bare bones. In this area, how do you compete with the 100s of message board communities that already have 10s of 1000s of active users and huge activity levels?
skeptical, thanks again for the feedback. you have a great point about the message boards. they are pretty thin right now, and we will be improving the ui and features of those as we go forward.
as for competing, along with message board improvements, we feel we have an advantage in offering a lot of the content in one place that would usually take 4 or 5 site visits to find. by putting the stats and news and other pieces right in there with the message boards we hope to make it easier for fans to access it all in a seamless way.
and you are right on about the fantasy stuff. we are trying to offer compelling content and tools for fantasy users, and those won’t be relevant to everyone. one challenge is certainly bridging that space between your more average fan and the fantasy users.
as i mentioned, we’re very early in the life of the site, and we have a lot of work to do in terms of rolling out new features, as well as polishing and better integrating what’s there.
i hope you’ll use the site some more and offer your input. we’d love to know what fans like you are looking for. thanks again.
Hi rvr ,
Thanks for joining the conversation and introducing fanation. I was not aware of your site while we were building Sportingo. There does seem to be similarity between the sites although our focus in on a Europe and not on American sports. I agree with your point that a key value is providing a central place for the avid sport fan to access a full view of the sport they care about. In response to skeptical’s comment about starting message boards in a crowded market, we decided not to offer message boards at this stage but rather to bring to our readers attention interesting conversations that are already taking place and them go to outside message boards to continue these conversations. I don’t see the point in duplicating what is already done well, but to add value by becoming the central place that an avid sport fan can create an identity voice their view and in the near future view sport events.
Ze’ev
CEO
Sportingo
i agree with skeptical. it’s all just commoditized content. most of the content like the stats and fantasy information looks like its licensed from places like stats inc. and just put it into a web 2.0 design. the community and social networking features are pretty weak. i’m a big dolphins fan. how can this msgboard http://www.fann.../show_board/202 compare with this http://www.finh...n.com/boardvb2/. the site says it is from former espn.com employees and it looks like espn.com 2.0. good professional content but bad community and social network features.
TC readers get early looks at sites like this before they have a whole lot of user generated content. In some case, and I believe this is one, you shouldn’t count that against them. Some sites don’t function prior to being populated, this one just doesn’t look as exciting as it should once contributions start coming in. Functionality wise though, I think it’s cool.
I am a religious user of espn sports forums. i think the key is there if you know what i’m talking about. i don’t want to give more clues in case i want to start my own sports site but if you spend enough time on those boards, you’ll know what the potential is and what’s important for fanatical fans like myself.
Marshall is correct, however the real problem with the sports niche is the saturation and fragmentation of the market. FanNation looks pretty cool but whether it can gather enough steam to lure people away from existing communities remains to be seen. I agree with some of the commentors that the community features here are a bit bare bones. This is definitely a niche where activity levels and active users are more important than having x million users. I see so many intriguing startups that are in this type of market and no matter how nice they are, can’t take off because they’re competing with huge existing sites. In FanNation’s case they’re competing not only with the ESPNs of the world but the unofficial fan sites too. Just having a good service and marketing the hell out of it won’t create a highly active community. The idea that you can have a single location for all sports is a great one, but nobody has yet been able to pull it off and for this reason. And by the way, the sports they cover is pretty limited. They have done an OK job with mainstream media content aggregation but I don’t see how anybody can build large communities around every team in a single place? If you look at some of the fan communities out there, they’re highly customized and are using great community software like vBulletin, which is hard to beat. You just can’t offer that in this type of uniform service.
@whatshisname:
ESPN’s community is actually pretty poor. Their forums are less active and much lower quality than some of the fan communities out there. And they’re pretty basic when compared to vBulletin. But they have massive marketing leverage so they have built up a decent-sized community, although a lot of fans avoid ESPN like the plague.
By the way, EPSN is launching a similar service this month. Was announced several months ago. And if you think ESPN has a successful model and reputation, read the responses to this:
http://www.dead...logs-184894.php
It’s interesting that FanNation was founded in 2006 by former ESPN.com employees. ESPN announced their web 2.0 plans a few months ago so they’ve probably been in development for a while. Were the FanNation founders aware of these plans? Were they involved in the development? Is it possible that ESPN is going to claim that ideas or technology were stolen? Just throwing that out there because it wouldn’t be the first time in web 2.0 (remember Facebook vs. UConnect).
Another site which is less Web 2.0 design-wise but is completely driven by user-generated content and doing quite well on that front without much mainstream publicity is Bleacher Report. Check it out.
the big difference with sportingo and bleacher report, in my opinion, is that they have a centralized editorial process. this is one way to control quality. our approach with fannation, though, is to trust the wisdom of the crowd (great book, btw) and let anyone be a contributor. we think we’ll get more content, and the stuff that rises to the top will be all the better for it, and more relevant to the users.
that said, it takes a lot of users to make it effective, so we do indeed need to capture the interest of a large number of people. this is where i think our differentiation comes into play. there’s more to web 2.0 than community features, imho. in that regard, we think we have a lot to offer.
we know we have a long way to go if we want to carve out a space and gain the loyalty of a large number of fans, but that’s the goal. only time will tell how successful we are.
to clarify, that was not meant as a criticism of sportingo or bleacher report. i think there is plenty of room in this space for lots of approaches, and diversity is good. ultimately it all leads to more and better content, i think.
It looks like a promising service, which will require lots of user contribution to succeed. More coverage on Israeli Startups and all other Web2.0 trends may be found in http://www.thecoils.com (in Hebrew)
Hi rvr,
You are missing a big part of the way our editorial process works.
1. Anyone can sign up to be a writer including third party fan sites and blogs that can take advantage of our editorial services and upload their existing content and gain more exposure on our site
2. As contributors gain a higher ranking on the site they get more rights to post and recommend additional third party sources
3. And this is very important our editorial team make an initial decision about where we post the article, But once it is live it is up to the readers reaction to decide where the article will end up.
We use the editorial process as a way to improve the quality of content and reduce the abuse that reliance on the lowest common denominator can create. At the same time it is up to our audience to decide what they think is good and shape the content on the site.
Ze’ev Rozov
CEO
ze’ev,
thanks for the clarification on what you’re doing. i think it’s a process that can work. sounds like a hybrid between totally open user-rated content and a traditional editorial system. definitely a good experiment and i don’t dispute that editorial input can be very valuable–just look at the quality difference between professional publications and the vast majority of blogs.
ultimately, it’s a diverse ecosystem that’s developing, and i think everyone is better off for having these different models out there. i won’t even say they’re competing or that one will come out on top, since i think there will always be a spectrum of successful approaches.
good luck, and i’m sure we’ll be learning from watching what you do while this space develops.
river
Here is world classification any categories 200 bigger karateka of all the times among medals taken away(gained) in official championships and world cup
here’s the world classification any categories 200 bigger karateka of all times among medals taken away (gained) in official championships and world cup !
(*voici le classement mondial toutes categories des 200 plus grand karatekas de tous les temps au nombre des médailles remportées en championnats et coupes du monde officiels !)
(*he aqui la clasificacion todo categories de los 200 mas grande karatekas de cada tiempo en total de medailles llevada (conseguida) en campionato oficiales y copa del mundo !)
1. EGEA JM (SPA)
2. JOSEPA D (HOL)
3. PINDA E (FRA)
4. CHARLES V (GB)
5. MASCI TH (FRA)
6. GUAZZARONI C (ITA)
7. LUQUE D (SPA)
8. Mc KAY P ( GB)
9. HAYASHI K ( JAP)
10. SUZUKI Y (JAP)
11. DOVY D (FRA)
12. NAKANO Y (JAP)
13. LEFEVRE G (CRO)
14. OTTO W (GB)
15. BIAMONTI A (FRA)
16. CHERDIEU G (FRA)
17. AMILLO MARTINEZ (SPA)
18. ROETHOF O (HOL)
19. ALAGAS H (TUR)
20. NISHIMURA S (JAP)
21. LEAL D (SPA)
22. PAPADOPOULOS K (GRE)
23. AMOZADEH (IRN)
24. BENETELLO D (ITA)
25. WALTERS L (GB)
26. PINNA C (FRA)
27. RUBIO J (ESP)
28. GOMEZ J (SWI)
29. THOMPSON G (GB)
30. GUERUNOV A (RUS)
31. DIETL T (GER)
32. BALDE S (FRA)
33. MURASE H (JAP)
34. PYREE M (FRA)
35. TAPOL J (FRA)
36. RONNING S (NOR)
37. BUGUR V (TUR)
38. MAEDA T (JAP)
39. FELIX D (FRA)
40. TAKENOUCHI M (JAP)
41. RUGGIERO P (FRA)
42. HAUBOLD M (GER)
43. SIMMI N (ITA)
44. KANDAZ R (TUR)
45. SHIMA T (JAP)
46. NEWBY P (GB)
47. LEEUWIN K (HOL)
48. ATKINSON J (GB)
49. LEHETET A (FRA)
50. SPATARO A (BEL)
51. DAGGFELT K (SWE)
52. ABAD R (ESP)
53. STELLING T (HOL)
54. SABANOVIC D (HOL)
55. YAMAMOTO S (JAP)
56. VARO A (FRA)
57. THOMAS W (GB)
58. SADAO T (JAP)
59. MONTAMA JL (FRA)
60. KONDO E (JAP)
61. MALAVE R (SWE)
62. CELIK Z (TUR)
63. TRAMONTINI G (FRA)
64. VAYRINEN JP (FIN)
65. SHAHER A (GB)
66. WATANABE L (JAP)
67. COLE J (GB)
68. WADA K (JAP)
69. GONZALEZ D (ESP)
70. HILL T (USA)
71. AZUMI T (JAP)
72. RICCIARDI A (ITA)
73. MURAKAMI K (JAP)
74. ALDERSON P (GB)
75. TERUCHIKA A (JAP)
76. BOSKOVIC L (GER)
77. KOTATA S (USA)
78. PLUMACHER L (VEN)
79. COLLINS J (GB
80. BAILLON Y (FRA)
81. GUBACHAYEV I (RUS)
82. DI DOMENICO L (ITA)
83. NAGAKI S (JAP)
84. BOULESNANE C (FRA)
85. TAMARU H (JAP)
86. SANTANA D (ESP)
87. PEAKALL D (AUS)
88. SHIMIZU Y (JAP)
89. NDIAYE M (SEN)
90. TURUNEN C (FIN)
91. D’AGOSTINO L (ITA))
92. IGLESIAS J (SPA)
93. ALLATTA F (BEL)
94. STODJADINNOV G (YUG)
95. DANIELS R (GB)
96. BETZIEN D (GER)
97. WATANABE J* (JAP)
98. AZADI S (GER)
99. HERERO T (ESP)
100. VALLEE R (FRA)
101. UCHIDA S (JAP)
102. BLANKS B (USA)
103. SARIYANNIS K (GER)
104. ETIENNE M (GB)
105. DETAILLE J (BEL)
106. PIRTIOJA J (FIN)
107. WHITE T (GB)
108. TOMAO S (FRA)
109. IDRIZI E (CRO)
110. USENAGIC G (YUG)
111. SAILSMAN M (GB)
112. JENSEN K (SWE)
113. GIANCENTI P (FRA)
114. RAMIRO A (ESP)
115. MANINEN M (FIN)
116. EGEA FR (SPA)
117. AMINCONE V (ITA)
118. FRANCIS G (GB)
119. HANSEN J (DEN)
120. RODRIGUEZ G (SPA)
121. SIMMI D (ITA)
122. DEVIGLI E (OST)
123. CODRINGTON E (GB)
124. PINTO A (BRA)
125. CHAABO F (GER)
126. MODAMIVISHKAEI J (IRN)
127. AMARILLA P (PAR)
128. ALSTAADTJAETHER M (NOR)
129. GACHULINEC S (CZE)
130. KOKUBUN T (JAP)
131. ANIKIN A (RUS)
132. MAROSVOLGY J (HUN)
133. ASHRAF M (EGY)
134. FERNANDEZ M (SPA)
135. CABREJAS C (SPA)
136. CARNIO J (CAN)
137. HIGGINS W (GB)
138. HAMAGUCHI J (JAP)
139. OLIVARES O (SPA)
140. ONO Y (JAP)
141. JEZ S (OST)
142. GRANET JL (FRA)
143. UCHI Y (JAP)
144. YAGLI H (TUR)
145. DORAN R (HOL)
146. GARGANGIU G (ITA)
147. LUGO I (MEX)
148. ROMIC G (YUG)
149. GOLDING M (AUS)
150. PENA JC (VEN)
151. BOSKOVIC G (YUG)
152. KOVACS A (HUN)
153. GUAZZARONI GL (ITA)
154. VAN REYBROECK M (BEL)
155. ROYERS F (HOL)
156. SERFATI S (FRA)
157. EYCKENS S (BEL)
158. HALLMAN T (SWE)
159. ANSELMO R (FRA)
160. CARBILLA JP (SPA)
161. VALERA D (FRA)
162. REEBERG O (HOL)
163. PINARD P (FRA)
164. TELL J (SWE)
165. IMMAMATSU Y (JAP)
166. RAUCH D (GER)
167. HACKETT T (GB)
168. HITA S (SPA)
169. TALARICO G ( ITA)
170. LIN CHING MING (ROC)
171. SAUVIN G (FRA)
172. HERNANDEZ G (SPA)
173. KAURIA J (FIN)
174. GARCIA R (SPA)
175. Mc KINNON S (GB)
176. VAZQUEZ D (VEN)
177. VAN LOEN R (HOL)
178. YOKOMICHI R (JAP)
179. ZAZO E (SPA)
180. POKORNI S (SWE)
181. CHIEN CHEN (ROC)
182. MIKOVIC V (YUG)
183. ANZAI R (JAP)
184. AKTEPE K (HOL)
185. ALVARADO M (SPA)
186. LEITO A (HOL)
187. FARMADIN K (SVK)
188. GAROFOLI M (LUX)
189. DI LUIGI M (ITA)
190. BURA D (DEN)
191. SHENKER D (HOL)
192. PELLICER B (FRA)
193. SACCHI G (ITA)
194. RIVANO R (HOL)
195. BORG A (GB)
196. PETERMAN G (OST)
197. NDOA F (SEN)
198. CAKIC D (BIH)
199. DE OLIVEIRA D (BRA)
200. GAZO J (SVK)
World Cups & Championships: Gold = 3000 / silver = 2000 / bronze = 1000
Officials Championships are :
Tokyo world championship 1970
Paris world championship 1972
Long beach world championship 1975
tokyo world championship 1977
madrid world championship 1980
Taiwan world championship 1982
Budapest world cup 1984*
Maastricht world championship 1984
Sydney world championship 1986
Budapest world cup 1987
Cairo World championship 1988
World cup 1989*
mexico world championship 1990
world championship 1992
world cup 1993*
world championship 1994
world championship 1996
world championship 1998
Munich world championship 2000
world championship 2002
world championship 2004
world championship 2006
(* = no informations about this championship)