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Bleacher Report Raises $22M in Funding Round

Sports news site Bleacher Report has gotten a fresh infusion of cash, with an additional $22 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners made available to grow the site.

The newest round of funding brings Bleacher Report’s total available cash to $40.5 million. Per a press release from the site, Crosslink Capital and Hillsven Capital also contributed to the newest funding round. With a large pool of more than 7,000 contributors, Bleacher Report plans to invest in additional content as well as content expansions into video and mobile initiatives.

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak International Partners, will join the site’s board. Harman was an “early backer of Huffington Post and Demand Media,” and he has commented on the potential of Bleacher Report:

“Sports is a big opportunity and no one has gotten it right yet,” Harman said. “I’d argue Bleacher Report has done a far better job of embracing the capabilities of the online medium than the big sports name brands have.”

Earlier this year, the site brought on King Kaufman of Salon, and paired up with SeatGeek to add additional content and secondary market ticket sales functions to Bleacher Report. The site, which has come in for no small level of critique for Google-gaming SEO tricks in the past, has taken on five full and part-time writers in the past week ahead of the funding round announcement, and content quality on Bleacher Report is expected to rise along with the site’s coffers.