Sportal was a company of the
dotcom boom at the end of the 1990s. Founded by
Rob Hersov
Rob or ROB may refer to:
Places
* Rob, Velike Lašče, a settlement in Slovenia
* Republic of Belarus
People
* Rob (given name), a given name or nickname, e.g., for Robert(o), Robin/Robyn
* Rob (surname)
* ''Rob.'', taxonomic author abbreviati ...
, and backed by
BSkyB
Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers ...
and
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; 29 September 193612 June 2023) was an Italian Media proprietor, media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a mem ...
's Fininvest among others, the company, originally called Pangolin, acquired rights to host a many official websites of Europe's leading football clubs (including
Real Madrid
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional Football club (association football), football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, th ...
,
Juventus
Juventus Football Club (; from , ), commonly known as Juventus or colloquially as Juve (), is an Italian professional Association football, football List of football clubs in Italy, club based in Turin, Piedmont, who compete in Serie A, the ...
,
AC Milan
(), commonly referred to as Milan or AC Milan () mainly outside of Italy, is an Italian professional Football club (association football), football club based in Milan, Lombardy. Founded in 1899, the club competes in the Serie A, the top tie ...
and
Bayern Munich) as well as lower-profile sites across a number of other sports. It also opened offices across Europe, in South Africa, and in Australia and at its peak employed over 300 people.
In December 1999 it was valued at
$170 million, and in the summer of 2000 it was named as the ''
Sunday Times's'' #1 web company at the same time it ran the website for
Euro 2000.
In the summer of 2000 Hersov was weeks away from selling the company to Vivendi Universal for £270m when market sentiment changed and the talks collapsed. Despite this, The Sunday Times named Sportal the No.1 e-business in the UK and it came out top in an e-league compiled by the web consultancy, Bathwick. But as the dot.com bubble burst, Sportal's size and lack of strong income streams quickly started to cause problems.
By March 2001 the company was in trouble and two rounds of redundancies saw two thirds of the staff laid off and savage spending cuts implemented. In April Hersov admitted Sportal was on the verge of closure if it did not secure more funding. Hersov injected his own money to keep the company afloat but even that did not arrest the slide.
In November 2001, UKbetting bought Sportal's domain names and trademark for £1 - marking the end of Sportal as a consumer website.
It paid another £190,000 for the company's technology and took on two of Sportal's remaining 70 staff. The brand initially continued as sports content site then in 2002 relaunched the brand as a multi-sports broadband video portal sportal.com.
In 2008, Sportal also opened its office in Mumbai and their Indian-centric website, www.sportal.co.in, was launched in November 2010.
References
{{Reflist
British sport websites