Sportal

Sportal was one of the leading companies in the dotcom boom at the end of the 1990s. Founded by Rob Hersov, and backed by BSkyB and Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest among others, the company, originally called Pangolin, voraciously acquired rights to host a plethora of official websites of Europe's leading football clubs (including Real Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan and Bayern Munich) as well as lower-profile sites across a number of other sports. It also opened offices across Europe and in South Africa and Australia.

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, attracting record numbers of visitors.

In November, what remained of the company was sold for £190,000 to 365 Media Group (then known as ukbetting plc). 365 initially continued Sportal 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 India-centric website, www.sportal.co.in, was launched in November 2010.

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