Multi-sports mobile application firm Score Media Inc. has acquired rival SportsTap as it looks for opportunities to work directly with U.S. marketers.

Broadening Score Media?s reach in the United States via the SportsTap deal will help the company be more competitive as it begins looking for advertising opportunities here. Score Media also plans to create a physical U.S. presence for the company in the near future.

?We?ll be setting up a sales office in New York in the next few months as we look to work directly with marketers instead of through ad networks,? said Dale Fallon, Score Media?s director of mobile.

Score Media, Toronto, has run successful marketing campaigns in the past in the Canadian marketplace with brands such as Labatt?s beer. Now that the firm?s reach has reached scale in Canada through both organic growth and the SportsTap acquisition, it is looking to replicate these efforts here.

?We?re very excited about working with U.S. marketers to help them tap into the highly loyal, young mobile sports fan,? said Benjie Levy, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Score Media.

Score Media will operate SportsTap as a standalone application.

Market is competitive
Both companies were founded in 2007 and have grown as they have introduced their apps across multiple mobile platforms.

ScoreMobile from Score Media is currently the second most popular free sports app on Android, while SportsTap is the third, behind ESPN and Yahoo. The audience for each, however, is complementary, especially for the iPhone.

?The deal helps us amplify our reach in the U.S. market,? Mr. Levy said.

SportsTap also has a deeper background in fantasy teams and player statistics than Score Media.

The deal will help Score Media become more competitive in the sports app marketplace, which has grown increasingly competitive. In the past 18 months, all the major sports leagues have introduced their own apps and several multimedia sports brands have come out with apps.

In addition, Yahoo acquired sports app firm Citizen Sports last year, further consolidating the marketplace. 

?Ultimately, there are a small handful of multi-sports apps that will be competitive in the marketplace,? Mr. Fallon said.

Because the leagues can offer great video content, other sports apps will need to focus on offering deep personalization going forward if they want to remain competitive, per Mr. Fallon.

?When it comes to things like alerts and tracking players across multiple sports, there is room for a few high-quality apps to serve fans in a meaningful way,? he said.

Final Take