Bantr
Bantr was a social app for football fans - built by Rishabh and Pratyush. Our thesis was to build a specific place for football fans to hangout online, share moments and interact.
What we learned
A separate place for the same social graph is not valuable enough unless they can suddenly do something (a key action or group of actions) that can't do else where.
An interest graph is probably more interesting for this vertical play but is hard to compete against existing ones. A social app for football fans built on interest graph is competing with Youtube, Instagram etc.
Identity for a sports fan is important so all efforts to build a sports social app should be around emphasizing a digital identity.
Status based product will run out of steam sooner than later. Your social app should be solving a problem or fulfilling a desire. The latter framing is better - focus on that.
Most sports fans don't want to go too deep into any product. They get value from the most 'on the surface' features of existing product. So they aren't very interested in new spaces.
Superfans have ritualized their habits around watching, celebrating sports - very hard to break or intercept their habits.
IP is a real issue. Work with teams and leagues to get IP right. See how AC Momento did it.