Why Did Paul Allen Bet $3.5 Million on SportStream?

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Quick Pitch: A personalized second screen social experience for sports fans.

Genius Idea: Second screen usage while watching TV is high, while sports and social media are a natural pairing, so SportStream cuts out the noise.

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Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen is clearly a huge sports fan — and as co-founder of a little company called Microsoft, he's got major tech bonafides. So his Vulcan Capital investment firm pouring $3.5 million into a social sports app makes some sense.

But with a slew of similar products coming out over the past year or so, why would Allen's big bet on the iPad app SportStream pay off?

Co-founders Will Hunsinger and Bob Morgan say SportStream's elegant user interface, play-by-play updates and sortable feeds of tweets from friends, fans, athletes and media are among the qualities that will help their app stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

Hunsinger and Morgan are both longtime sports fans with years of experience working in technology. They told Mashable in an interview that they were inspired to create SportStream after juggling Twitter, text messages and other digital ways to chat with far-flung friends and family while watching games.

"It's been interesting over the past few years to look at the intersection of this inherently social thing like sports with social media, but there hasn't really been a super cohesive way to do things," Morgan says.

SportStream, which is free and now available in the App Store, was launched Thursday. It was spun out of Hunsinger's last company, the content discovery app Everi, which was also funded by Vulcan Capital. Hunsinger and Morgan say SportStream took just over six months to go from initial idea to launch.

SportStream will send you push notifications to let you know when Facebook and Twitter friends are watching a game and following along with the app.

Once you open it on your own device, you can tweak your feed to include combinations of friends, major sportswriters, media outlets relevant to a certain contest and more. Predict winners and/or broadcast who you're rooting for to invite banter with other users.

You can restrict your conversation to just close friends, or open it up to general users within the app. Apart from the social element, live play-by-play will keep you updated on what you're watching and invite you to check out box scores and other stat trackers. You can also post to Twitter and Facebook from within the app, and receive game preview and recap articles as desired.

According to the research firm Forrester, 85% of tablet owners use their devices while watching TV, so the market is ripe for some to capture techie sports fans' attention. SportStream certainly appears to be a robust offering for iPad aficionados, but time will tell whether it can rise above the crowd and make Paul Allen's $3.5 million bet pay off.

Will you check out SportStream, or do you already have a favorite social sports app? Let us know in the comments.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Thumbnail image courtesy Stuck in Customs, Flickr.