No actual footballs were harmed in making of this startup

This is our second funding scoop of the day. Who wants to make it a hat trick?

Numberfire is a New York startup company taking an algorithmic approach to crunching data, helping fantasy sports nuts find the best players at the lowest prices. Founder and CEO Nik Bonaddio got his first $100,000 in seed capital from Regis Philbin, after starring in an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Nothing against Regis, but the company has now put together a slightly more tech savvy group of investors. Numberfire, a graduate of the recent ER Accelerator program, has raised a $650,000 seed round from investors that include RRE Ventures, Pennyblack's Eliot Durbin and TechStars David Tisch.

That number will eventually rise to $750,000, but the startup closed on part of the round as they grow aggressively.

The young company has a number of big partnerships. They powered the football playoff predictions for ESPN and wrote a weekly column for the sports giant, along with weekly blog posts for Sports Illustrated. They have also developed a relationship with the fast growing SB Nation, who's player prediction widget is powered by Numberfire.

"Our predictions for football this year beat Yahoo, ESPN and CBS, so we feel really good about our methodology," Co-foudner and COO Sean Weinstock told Betabeat (you can see the proof here). "We've got 20,000 registered users now and are planning to expand to basketball and baseball in the coming months."

8 weeks ago the startup caught flack in the blogosphere for predicting three teams from the AFC North would make the NFL playoffs. Low and behold, it happened. "We like to put our money where our mouth is," Weinstock says.

Steve Gutentag from Sitesimon.

Betabeat moseyed up to Murat Aktihanoglu, the accented managing director of Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, after the program's demo day this morning in a basement auditorium at NYU's Stern School of Business. He had the overwhelmed, flushed face of a proud parent. "Oh, it was amazing," he said, eyes widening. ERA put its ten startups through 1,500 meetings, he had calculated, and all the companies have users and 80 percent have revenue. One of them had just signed up 35 cities and two Dubai landmarks: the biggest mall in the world, which serves 47 million visitors, and the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. 

"That was incredible!" said Brian Cohen, vice chairman of the New York Angels, ambushing Mr. Aktihanoglu at the podium. "Grand slam!" He pinched the director's cheek. "Murat is magical. He really is."

Mr. Cohen was impressed by the startups. "I go to all the demos," he said. "I was just at DEMO--I went to TechCrunch," he said. "This was quality."

The room was about three-quarters full--perhaps 300 attendees or so--including representatives from Union Square Ventures, TechStars, Founder Collective, Greycroft, Bessemer Ventures, and Bloomberg Ventures. Judging by the lines at the startups' tables, Public Stuff (who signed up the mall), Sitesimon and BuzzTable were the favorites.

Below are the startups and their raises:

Bespoke Post: Curated mail subscription service for products men want. Seeking $500,000.

Centzy: Comparison shopping engine for local services. Raised less than $100,000 of $500,000.

WebThriftStore: Provides a private label eBay solution for charities that enables anyone to turn their unused "stuff" into tax-deductible donations. Raised $625,000 out of $1.5 million.

BuzzTable: Establishes a direct line of communication between restaurants and customers. Raising $750,000.

Pricing Engine: A business intelligence service for digital marketers. Just started raising a $750,000 round.

LetGive: Provides a platform that connects application developers, charities and socially-conscious consumers. Seeking $750,000.

Parking Panda: A mobile real-time parking discovery tool. Has $50,000 committed for a $750,000 round.

PublicStuff: Enables cities to easily receive and manage service requests from citizens. Raised $100,000 out of $750,000 so far.

NumberFire: Analytics platform that uses quantitative modeling to analyze sports. Raised $400,000 out of $750,000.

Sitesimon: Analyzes browsing behavior and recommends web content with minimal user input. Raised $500,000, seeking $3 million.