fan-communities
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ALLCITY's $25 Million Bet: Local Sports Fans Still Want a Room of Their Own
The Denver company built a five-city sports network without buying game rights. Its real product is a daily habit - and the business gets interesting when that habit is strong enough to sell ads, shirts, memberships, and a seat at the watch party.
Medallion
Medallion is a New York-based music technology company that gives recording artists a white-label digital hub to build and monetize their own fan communities. Founded by former Songkick CEO Matt Jones and launched in 2022, the platform lets artists promote releases, tour dates and merch drops, sell digital collectibles and 'Digital Deluxe' albums, and offer exclusive access to their most devoted superfans - all under the artist's own branding rather than a third-party social feed. Backed by $22.7M in funding from investors including Dragonfly, Lightspeed Faction, The Chernin Group and Metallica's Black Squirrel Partners, Medallion powers communities for artists such as Jungle, Disclosure, Greta Van Fleet, Sigur Ros and My Morning Jacket.
DubClub
DubClub is a Chicago-based platform where sports bettors find, follow, and subscribe to vetted handicappers ("cappers") for premium picks and analysis delivered by text, email, and Discord. It gives creators the tools to monetize their betting content - payments, subscriber messaging, and community - while giving amateur bettors one trustworthy place to access expert plays. Backed by a $7.5M Series A led by Renegade Partners, DubClub's tagline is "Win More Together."
Fandom
Fandom is the world's largest fan platform - a sprawling network of 250,000+ community-built wikis covering movies, TV, gaming and anime, reaching about 350 million monthly visitors. Born as Wikicities in 2004 from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, it grew into a for-profit pop-culture reference engine and, after acquiring GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs and Giant Bomb in 2022, also one of the loudest editorial voices in entertainment.