Irish Times Group acquires sports app Score Beo

App has over 190,000 unique users in over 110 countries.

Fergus Grimes of Score Beo, the GAA scores and news app has soared in popularity.

Sports app Score Beo has been acquired by the Irish Times Group.

The app was launched in 2021 to provide GAA fans with up-to-the-minute scores from inter-county, underage, club and schools’ games, along with fixtures, lineups and competition rankings. 

The deal is the latest in a series of acquisitions by the Irish Times Group strategy to expand its digital offering. In August it acquired the luxury publishing and events group Gloss Publications. In May it acquired the death notices website RIP.ie.

To date, Score Beo has over 190,000 unique users in over 110 countries. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Managing Director of The Irish Times, Deirdre Veldon said: “The acquisition of Score Beo helps us to enhance coverage of GAA in our titles by meeting the needs of fans around the world for live scores and match information from the hundreds of games taking place every weekend.” 

Score Beo founder Fergus Grimes created a business plan for the app while studying for his degree in Galway and it was released shortly after he graduated. “It’s exciting to get this over the line, I’m looking forward to continuing this journey of growth serving the needs of Gaelic supporters all across the globe and opening doors for new possibilities.”

Earlier this week The Irish Times Group reported a 5.5% rise in revenues for 2023 to €115.2m.

The Group, which includes the Irish Examiner and Echo titles, showed a reduction in operating losses after exceptional items of €2m from €2.6m in 2022. The Group said digital subscription revenues rose 14% with third-party print contracts rising 39%. Revenues from print rose by 4% with the company benefitting from the reduction in the Vat rate to zero for newspaper sales.

The Group's investment portfolio recovered the majority of losses in 2022 and gained €2.3m during the year with the trend continuing into 2024.

“We’ve made some good progress over the course of 2023, but we still have some way to go to secure the future of our business," MsVeldon said. "We have seen that audiences and subscribers respond to quality content relevant to their lives and they are proving they are willing to pay for it from our major titles, including The Irish Times and Irish Examiner."