Whistle Sports, a digital sports content aggregator focused on millennial audiences, said it has landed a $20 million “C” round of funding from TEGNA, NBC Sports Ventures, Sky and Emil Capital.
Whistle Sports, which announced a $28 million “B” round in January 2015 from a group that included Sky and Liberty Global, has raised a total of about $60 million.
Launched in 2014, Whistle Sports, which counts go90 among its digital distribution partners, said it reach recently reached an aggregate of 170 million across all its social channels, and that the service’s user base has been growing by more than 2 million each week.
Whistle Sports’s core audience is age 14-30, though the service sees “a lot of movement on both sides of those numbers,” company exec Brian Selander told Multichannel News in an interview last fall (subscription required).
“Whistle Sports has activated and inspired a new generation of sports fans and followers. Our strength in distribution coupled with their innovative content, will create numerous opportunities for both companies to grow across platforms,” said Gracia Martore, president and CEO of TEGNA, in a statement. “This investment and strategic partnership will not only enable both of our companies to reach valuable new audiences, it will also combine our respective expertise to create more innovative content and advertising solutions.”
“Whistle Sports has successfully captured the imaginations, attention and engagement of millennial sports fans, and consistently delivers compelling content and options to brands and agencies eager to connect with that critical and growing demographic,” added Rick Cordella, SVP and GM, digital media, at NBC Sports Group. “Whistle Sports has proven to be a reliable source of original and creative content, and their data-driven approach to developing new audience insights sets them up for an even stronger future”
