Sports app raises £5.3m in seed funding with aid of Luka Modric

A new sport app has launched out of beta stage after raising £5.3m in seed funding, with a significant investment from football star Luka Modric.

Sportening – already boasting 250,000 users after just ten months and is now attracting 2,000 new fans per day – will use the investment to continue its fast pace of growth in 2022 and into 2023, targeting 6 million fans on the platform by the middle of next year.

The app is the only sports ‘vertical’ social media app, connecting people with a specific shared interest, away from the noise and occasional vitriol found in mainstream social media channels. The app is currently growing at 60 per cent month-on-month, with a large portion of users coming from the UK, US and Italy.

The app currently caters to football fans but plans to expand its offering to other sports, such as basketball and American football. Headquartered in Croatia, the app has a newly opened office in San Francisco, with a London office opening in the near future. The business is growing rapidly and currently has a team of over 50 people.

Sportening allows fans from around the world to meet and communicate with like-minded supporters in chat rooms, surf statistics and scores, rate players after matches, and view breaking news feeds on their favourite teams, with unique content not available anywhere else.

Ballon d’Or winning footballer Luka Modric said: “When I first heard about Sportening, it seemed obvious that something like this should exist - a social network for sports fans. But when you look at the market, there’s no such thing. Taking football on its own, there are three billion fans around the world, so the potential is enormous.

“When I saw just how passionate the Sportening team are about building something unique for fans, I immediately wanted to support them. I wouldn’t be where I am today without fans and their recent absence from stadiums emphasized just how important they are to the game.

“I now want to give something back, by helping Sportening to build the biggest and best online fan community.”

Sportening was founded by Croatian entrepreneur Ivan Klaric, who is based in San Francisco, and previously launched gaming tech company before selling the business to Superology (previously called Score Alarm) in 2017.