Pundit Arena, a 2013 startup that runs an online sports media platform, said it has secured a €650,000 seed funding round from Irish and US angel investors.

The company was founded by UCC graduates Richard Barrett and Ross O’Dwyer, and populates its site with user-generated articles. Contributors whose work gets picked for the Pundit Arena site are then paid via a revenue sharing model that the firm calls ‘the Hit List’.

Currently employing ten people, Pundit Arena plans to double its full-time workforce as a result of the investment.

Among those backing the venture are Colm Lyon and Conor Mallagan. Lyon sold his online payments business, Realex Payments, in 2015 for €115m, grossing around €75m from the deal.

Lyon led the funding round, investing €350,000 into Pundit Arena in December 2015. Readia Ltd, Pundit Arena’s operating company, also received other equity investment amounting to €145,000, according to filings.

In Association with

Other investors in the seed funding round included Conor Mallaghan, who owns Carton House. Two new directors were also appointed to Readia in December – John Lamphiere, MD of Quantcast’s international HQ in Dublin who invested €20,000, and Paul Davey, who is CFO in another of Colm Lyon’s companies, Pay With Fire.

Pundit Arena won an Ignite Business of the Year award in 2004 and now claims to have over 300 writers contributing to the site. Some 40% of Pundit Arena’s monthly site traffic originates in the UK.

Pictured are Richard Barret (left) and Ross Dwyer (right), Pundit Arena founders, with Sean O'Sullivan, of South Cork Local Enterprise Office