Footbalistic raises $500K for soccer data

San Francisco startup picks up new funding on eve of World Cup

Footbalistic, a professional statistics and analytics site for soccer data, has raised a $500K round from angel investors, including Eric Di Benedetto. The round is still open to new backers.

Along with the funding, the San Francisco-based startup announced that it has confirmed a partnership to provide analytics tools to Radio Monte Carlo (RMC), a top French sports radio station. The company has also launched a Firefox plugin so that users can quickly search the site from their toolbar.

Named after the sport only Americans call "soccer," Footbalistic is seeking to be the definitive database for all information related to the world game. CEO and co-founder Stephane Delbecque says the site was originally founded by fans of the sport who constantly sought answers to questions like, “Where did these two players play together before?” or “Who was the top European scorer in 2008?”

With over 25,000 pages of team and player profiles featuring key stats, news, and photos, Footbalistic strives to be a go-to source both for fans and professionals alike.

For RMC, the soccer site has provided customized data mining and analysis features that it is prepared to also offer to other third-party companies that seek special access to Footbalistic's data.

Footbalistic is preparing for a spike in popularity as people around the world start getting pumped for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, kicking off in South Africa on June 11 and lasting until July 11. In preparation for that event, the site has published a history of the World Cup, complete with statistics, news, comparisons, and photos.

(For confused Americans, Delbecque says the company also owns socceristic.com, which simply redirects back to footbalistic.com.)