Fancred: The Social Network That Enables Fans to Share and Discover Sports Content

Sports fans are a fast growing social media demographic. According to the 2013 Global Sports Media Consumption Report from sports news company PERFORM in partnership with Kantar Media and TV Sports Markets, more than half of all Americans follow sports. Of those following sports, more than half consume sports online, 35 percent follow using a mobile device and 25 percent follow on social media.

“Unofficially, Twitter recently admitted that over half of their content is related to sports,” says Hossien Kash Razzaghi, CEO and Co-Founder of Fancred, an app that enables sports fans to share and discover sports content.

Despite the growing contingency of sports fans turning to social media for their sports news, there still aren’t many places online for sports fans to gather and interact around the thing they all love.

Enter Fancred, where users can submit links, upload images and videos, and post questions or status updates. Indeed, Razzaghi says Fancred is a sports social network and the behavior of Fancred users is essentially the same as what you might see on other social networks, with a few unique exceptions.

First, Razzaghi says, Fancred is very visual and designed around the user experience. The other thing that makes the network unique is the Fancred score, which enables users to build credibility within the community.

“Content is no longer a problem. People are posting content all the time” he says. “Determining what content is the best or what person to follow or not follow can be a problem.”

Razzaghi says the Fancred score is a measure of how active a user is in within the app. However, the score isn’t meant to determine how big a fan you are and posting lots of content doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a high Fancred score. Instead, Razzaghi says the score is based on an algorithm which weighs certain kinds of activity over others.

“You can post all you want and over time, yes, that’ll count toward your score,” says Razzaghi. “It’s such small movement, versus posting quality content that has people follow or engage with you. I don’t think you can game that.”

In fact, Fancred boasts a 30 percent active daily user rate, which Razzaghi says is three times the industry standard. He also says that there are thousands of established journalists and citizen journalists on Fancred and these content creators are using Fancred to share their content as well.

The Fancred app launched in March 2013 on iPhones. However, even if the future is mobile, it would be foolish to ignore the power of the web, says Razzaghi. This is exactly why Fancred is launching 2.0 with updates for the iOS app and web access for the first time. The app will be available for Android OS and tablet devices in 2014.

Ultimately, Razzaghi says the vision is to unite the world’s sports fans. Of course, activity spikes during a sporting event, so the relaunch of the app and the new website are just in time for the Super Bowl.

“We expect a significant spike in traffic for the Super Bowl and we’re getting ready of that,” Razzaghi says.