Independent sports media company FloSports has scored a fresh round of investment, completing a series D round led by India-based Dream Sports that brings the company’s total funds raised to-date to more than $100 million.
FloSports didn’t disclose the amount of the latest investment but has publicly stated that earlier funding rounds raised $76.2 million – suggesting the most recent round raised roughly around $24 million.
Sports technology company Dream Sports joins existing FloSports investors including Causeway Media Partners, Warner Bros. Discovery, DCM Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Fertitta Capital.
In a statement, FloSports Co-Founder and CEO Mark Floreani described business traction for the sports-focused streaming service, saying “over the past two years we have doubled our revenue and achieved sustained profitability.”
The announcement categorized 2024 as “the most successful year in FloSports history,” during which it streamed 40,000 live events, reached more than 23 million viewers, and saw a 24% increase in social media engagements – all helping to drive record (yet undisclosed) revenue in 2024.
Floreani also commented on the benefits of securing Dream Sports, which owns the globe’s largest fantasy sports platform and is the parent of sports content and commerce platform FanCode, as an investor.
“Dream is the perfect partner for FloSports. Much like us, they are passionately focused on their customers and creating a better product for sports fans. This investment and their expertise will accelerate our ability to deliver on our mission of growing our sports every day,” Floreani said, adding that having the company on as a strategic partner well positions FloSports to build on its financial performance and also boost the customer experience for its sports offering.
The funding announcement called out leveraging Dream Sports’ expertise in fan engagement, data-driven insights and digital prowess to offer FloSports guidance in these areas.
“FloSports has built an incredible business and we are excited to support their mission to revolutionize sports streaming, said Harsh Jain, co-founder and CEO of Dream Sports, in a statement. “We look forward to helping the fantastic team at the company build one of the world’s best sports media platforms.”
Funneling investment into content, distribution, product experience
So what’s FloSports doing with the latest investment?
For one, funds will be used to grow the company’s sports portfolio through content acquisitions. That includes content for several specific verticals that the company is looking to build this year, a FloSports spokesperson told StreamTV Insider. Those verticals include FloCollege (a new college-focused streaming service just launched last fall), FloRacing, FloHockey, FloWrestling, FloGrappling, FloCheer, and FloTrack.
Across its platform, FloSports already produces a range of live and on-demand events, editorial and social content, as well as long and short-form originals focused on sports and athletes. In terms of content, the service currently counts more than 400 rights partners representing over 25 sports globally. It introduced a revamped app for CTV last to improve the user experience, coinciding with the launch of FloCollege on October 15.
For FloCollege specifically, the FloSports spokesperson told STV Insider that funds will be used to help further acquisitions, noting the platform currently has 13 college conferences in the portfolio and is looking to add more by the start of fall.
Priced at $19.99 per month or $107.88 per year, the FloCollege service aims to cater to underserved Division-II and Division-III athletics, along with certain Division-I sports, featuring live events, original programming and news. People that use a .edu email from a member institution can sign up for FloCollege at a discounted price of $9.99 per month or $71.88 per year.
As for traction on the college sports-focused service, the spokesperson told STV Insider “we’re very pleased with FloCollege so far.” Since it launched in mid-fall of last year, the company still doesn’t have stats for a full academic year, but during the short time in market it produced more than 11,000 events that accounted for 125 million live minutes and earned more than 27 million social impressions.
Aside from content, FloSports is also looking to fuel its latest funds into expanded distribution efforts. As FloSports looks to reach wider audiences, those plans span growing its footprint of device platforms and distributor partners, while expansions into new international markets represent another potential growth area as well, the spokesperson affirmed to STV Insider. And the spokesperson teased that the company intends to share news later this week focused on developing the FloSports platform for smart TVs.
That comes on the heels of its CTV app overhaul last October that promised easier navigation and discovery of live sporting events alongside more personalization.
Taylor Cox, senior product manager for CTV at FloSports, led the app redesign and during a press roundtable last fall acknowledged some critical customer feedback around content discovery with the previous app that the changes aimed to address.
As of last October, about 50% of FloSports viewership occurred on CTV devices.
Additionally, a press release about the latest funding round called out investment allocations towards FloSports efforts that enhance consumers’ product experience, scale production and improve streaming capabilities.
LionTree Advisors acted as the exclusive financial advisor to FloSports for this transaction while KPMG served as the exclusive financial advisor to Dream Sports.
Article updated to add information about the companies' respective financial advisors for the transaction.