A fishing app beat out others made for broadcasters, teams, and leagues to win best app Thursday night at the Yahoo! Sports Technology Awards.
Fishbrain was nominated alongside SportsCastr, Sky Sports’ Jeff Bot, the West Ham United Official App, the Major League Soccer Mobile App, and MatchPint. SportsCastr is a video broadcasting app, Jeff Bot is a chat bot based on Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling, and MatchPint is an app that helps people in the U.K. find pubs showing specific matches.
The free-to-use Fishbrain app is the world’s largest fishing-based social network. It has more than 8 million users and has logged more than six million catches.
Fishbrain is backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s venture capital firm, B Capital. The company raised a $13.5 million Series B in March 2018 that was led by B Capital with participation from SoftBank Ventures Korea and existing investors Northzone and Industrifonden. Fishbrain has to-date raised $28 million in total funding.
“We were in an incredibly competitive category alongside a number of very popular football apps, so for Fishbrain, an app dedicated to the angling community, to come out on top fills us with real pride,” said Fishbrain CEO and co-founder Johan Attby.
The app enables anglers to share photos and locations of catches. And of course boast about them. Fishbrain is also working to add analysis tools, having recently launched BiteTime, which provides advanced fishing forecasts.
BiteTime collects and analyzes data from the millions of catches compiled in the Fishbrain system, as well as from more than 30 geographic attributes, including weather and climate. It uses machine learning to find trends, such as determining the best time to catch a particular fish species.
Other features on the app include an interactive map to help anglers find new places to fish, data entry that enables them to record their catches, and a broader networking component that helps anglers plan trips, share tips on the most effective baits and techniques, and purchase gear.
Yahoo’s sports tech awards covered a breadth of topics, ranging from the best digital technology (IBM Watson and ESPN Fantasy Insights) to the best sports equipment, apparel or wearable technology (Solos smart glasses) and the best technology for elite performance (SBG Sports Software’s RaceWatch Race Strategy).
The award for most innovative sports partnerships went to Intel and LaLiga (for 360-degree highlights), while the best tech for fan engagement went to Formula 1 and Goodform for F1 Fan Voice. The best tech for participation went to the Cricket Australia Coach App, while Mycujoo won for best sports commerce.