FourLeagues.com: One Stop News-Shop for Sports

Tired of surfing the Web and bouncing between multiple sports sites for the latest updates on your favorite team? So was Georgetown University student Arian Ghashghai, 19, of Rockville.

His solution? Create a website for sports fans that curates news from major, credible sources, creating a newsfeed of articles on pro sports teams.

Fourleagues.com is a site that allows sports fans to find news on their favorite teams all in one location -- no need for multiple Web searches. The site features news on the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB and English Premier League teams, as well as a trending category of top news from around the Internet.

Ghashghai was originally studying business at Georgetown University, but said the website work prompted a switch to computer science at the end of his freshman year.

The inspiration for FourLeagues came when Ghashghai read a headline about the Washington Wizards trading a key player.

“I was a little bit shocked,” Ghashghai said. “So I started scouring Google to see if I could find anything else other than that one story that I read. So that’s where the idea came from. I thought, ‘wait a minute, let me make something that does all the searching for me in real time’.”

FourLeague’s algorithms compile news coverage from all around the Internet -- local and national newspapers, sportscasters, fan blogs, etc. -- to find all relevant content for each team’s news page. A Reddit-like voting system on the website allows users to vote on popular headlines.

Ghashghai is a rising junior at Georgetown University, and also a big sports fan -- his favorite teams are the Washington Wizards and Washington Redskins. But right now, he is working on FourLeagues full-time.

“I ‘started’ the site last summer, but was basically just playing around with software and coding around a bit to finish the minimum viable product while in school,” Ghashghai said. “I was working about 10-20 hours a week on it. This summer, when I finally decided to really launch the site, it has become a full-time job, since I’m trying to get press, build strategic relationships, prepare to acquire venture capital and, of course, keep innovating the product. I see a viable business opportunity for myself building off of this site so I find myself working at least 50 hours a week right now.”

With the current platform, users can go on FourLeagues, and click to their favorite sports team for a complete list of current articles. But Ghashghai has a bigger plan for the future of the website.

“With all the technologies available to us today, users should need no more than one click to gain direct access to all the news that gauges their interests -- without searching, browsing or other user actions,” Ghashghai said. “As a result  we are continuing to create and innovate a non-invasive platform that allows every user to have a unique and personalized experience that is tailored to their interests, without needing to take any direct action to obtain that experience.”

But the new platform will not only allow users to customize their experience without extra clicks. Ghashghai also has plans to allow relevant news to show up with personalized content.

“What you basically have right now is the conventional sources like CNN and the other side is, you have the personalized media, which is where you put in what you’re interested in, it’ll curate that content for you and put it on the Internet,” Ghashghai said.

Ghashghai predicts the upgrade for FourLeagues will come by the end of summer.

Since the launch of FourLeagues, the site has received roughly 130 page views a day -- 40 to 50 unique visitors. Ghashghai says revenue is negligible right now because of the low traffic and the current goal is to elevate traffic to FourLeageus.