Stats. Community. Content: Most sports media companies are good at one. Tribuna.com decided to build all three and won awards for the technology and the journalism in the same year.
Tech first — even when it didn’t look like it
From the outside, Tribuna looks like a sports website although what’s underneath is closer to a product company. Roughly a quarter of the team works in product and engineering — developers, designers, QA, and product managers — building infrastructure that most media organizations would outsource or simply lack. The editorial operation runs on top of that infrastructure, not alongside it.
In a nutshell, Tribuna.com is a global sports tech company combining a media newsroom, a live statistics platform, and a fan community. Founded in 2010 by Dmitry Navosha and Maks Berazinski, it operates today across eight languages, with over 12 million monthly users, a flagship football app, Football Xtra, and a network of 12 club-dedicated apps covering the top teams in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. With 200 people across nearly 30 countries, a social media reach of over 100 million, and competitions from over 160 countries, Tribuna sits at the intersection of sports media and sports technology — building toward becoming the go-to second-screen for fans globally.
“It’s combining two things that are usually not quite good in combination,” as Iryna Chernukha, Head of Partnerships, put it in a recent FixEd podcast conversation. That tension, and how Tribuna has resolved it, is the real story here.
The $1.5 million invested in Football Xtra — entirely self-funded — reflects that positioning. “The traditional media model no longer works,” Berazinski told Forbes Ukraine. “The future lies in combining content with community, technology, and analytics.” The app delivers live match stats, editorial coverage, and a financial data layer: player salaries, transfer values, cost per goal, and cost per minute played — turning raw numbers into insights fans can use.
“We went further than what SofaScore or Flashscore offer,” Berazinski explained. “We show the connection between money spent by the club, salary, and actual player performance. Many platforms separate statistics, transfer data, and salary info. We want to be the place where users see the full picture and find patterns.” The goal isn’t to replicate existing live-score leaders but to build something that makes their data meaningful in context. Users can follow live stats from Tribuna’s match center alongside editorial coverage and community reactions, all in one place.
The product won Technology Project of the Year at the SBC Awards 2025. A 103-member jury across 23 categories cited its practical impact and long-term design. At the same ceremony, journalist Stanislav Oroshkevych received Sports Journalist of the Year for investigative reporting. Two awards went to the same company. “For many in the media industry, Tribuna.com still looks like an unusual hybrid, and we are comfortable with that,” Navosha said. “We invest heavily in technology and product development and also rely on the intuition, boldness, and journalistic rigor of our editorial teams. Technology and journalism are not competing priorities. They confirm a single strategic direction.”
Journalism that does more than report
The editorial operation is not a content factory feeding an algorithm. Tribuna’s newsroom follows a “journalism of change” philosophy — coverage designed for real-world impact. Tribuna journalists have helped cancel controversial friendlies, uncovered gymnastic and biathlon issues that sparked reforms, and pressured officials into decisions they might not have made.
Tribuna covered those Olympics directly from Italy. This is one of many times the newsroom sends journalists to events, rather than relying on wire copy. “The tag ‘war’ shouldn’t even exist on our platform,” Chernukha has said, “but here we are.”
Community as infrastructure, not a feature
The community layer marks where Tribuna sets itself apart from traditional sports media. Club channels might deliver official news, but fans crave the lively speculation, honest critique, and spirited debates only fellow supporters can provide. Recognizing this need, Tribuna built its platform with the fan community at its center.
Users write blogs, participate in match chats, vote in polls, and rank comments. A fan blog that gains traction can appear next to the editor-in-chief’s column. For instance, Tribuna’s deputy editor-in-chief started as a community blogger. One former community analytics blogger went on to work as a scout for a professional football club in Brazil. Community here serves as both an audience and a talent pipeline.
“We bring our community audience direct access to world champions and top commentators,” says Chernukha. “We consult colleagues from foreign media on distribution. Forbes asks us for comment whenever major sports business collaborations occur. We are at marketing conferences, journalism events, SEO gatherings, and affiliate forums.” The logic for joining all these rooms is simple: a complex machine works only when all its parts move together.
Berazinski puts the main idea plainly: “The era of one-way communication is ending. People want to discuss matches, share opinions, and see themselves on the front page. With us, fans become part of the content.” Over a billion people worldwide follow football. Tribuna’s goal is to build a product for all of them.
Built under pressure, rebuilt under more
Tribuna has been stress-tested in ways that most media companies never face. The platform was blocked in Belarus in 2020 after years of covering what Belarusian athletes thought about the political situation in the country, making it one of the first outlets shut down after the contested elections that August.
Then came 2022. When the invasion began, revenue fell to zero within weeks. Seven colleagues went to the front lines. Berazinski described what followed as a period of urgent adaptation — when choices are limited, teams push harder. From 2022 to 2024, Tribuna operated with renewed startup energy, ambition undiminished but under unfamiliar, intense constraints. The company restored pre-war revenue, launched Football Xtra using only self-funded capital, established Cyprus as its operational base, and hired Ukrainian developers —even during blackouts — while others cut headcount. “It is our conscious choice to be part of the country’s economy and share the risks together,” Berazinski said.
The remote model forced first by COVID, then by war is now just how the company works. Two hundred people in thirty countries, most of whom have never met, ship a global sports product every day.
“We want to be a company that makes a great global product with local roots,” Berazinski told Forbes Ukraine. “To show it is possible — for journalists, developers, and the market as a whole.” Given its beginning and survival, it’s hard to argue with the proof of concept.
