With a team comprised of childhood friends, Statzup was founded in December 2012. These football and sports entuthiasts specialize in fantasy football and so far they have developed games where football fans can create their own virtual teams (mirroring real players) to compete in leagues against others. What differentiates Statzup from other fantasy sports platforms is their partnership with statistics companies that provide real insights and data into the game. As the platform is fed by stats and data, it delivers a realistic game with a high level of detail and focus on user experience. Individual winners are determined by the points accumulated based on the real-life performance of the players.
![stalogo_Thumb[1]](https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads//2015/03/stalogo_Thumb1.png)
Statzup participated in the local Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 held in Hungary where they came in second place. Tamás Varga, one of the Founders states that their “first public appearance at Microsoft Imagine Cup changed everything, we received domestic press coverage, mentoring from Microsoft and appointments with VCs”. As a result of the compelling product and the effective team, the OTP – DayOne Seed Fund invested HUF 60 million (~USD 273,000) into Statzup. Additionally, Statzup is supported by the Microsoft BizSpark plus program and they have developed their mobile platform on Azure 360 cloud servers. The launch of their game for the Hungarian Football Association received 5,000 registrations in its first 26 hours and has grown to a membership of 13,000 in Hungary within six months. This application has been developed on multiple platforms including Windows Phone 8, Xbox One, Android, and in the pipeline an iOS version is on the pipeline as well.
The start-up has launched a second application, just in time for the World Cup, aiming to reach millions of user at an international level: Fantasy Football .To achieve this, they heavily rely on Azure cloud services as it would enable them to escalate quickly in case of a heavy demand. The Fantasy Football application will be rolled out on June 9th in five countries, with plans of going fully global. The app will have many added features including a real-time feed of data, and multimedia content about the players. Therefore, football fans will have an awesome and well-rounded user experience, nicely complementing the football fever coming up this summer!
Stay tuned! Statzup also intends to develop new apps and games for other sports!
