New technology from startup ventures is transforming the global sports industry. This Startup Series has introduced over 300 startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience by allowing Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story and pitch their idea. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for inclusion in this series. This particular startup is part of the Hype Foundation.
Company name: IPY Holding AB
Founder(s): Per Malmqvist (CEO), Karl Sjöblom (COO), David Johansson (CTO)
Headquarters: Gothenburg, Sweden
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Iplay Sport gives athletes the tools they need to build their personal brand as well as achieve full control over their career & communication with all their various brand stakeholders.
2. Problem & Solution
None of today’s existing social medias have been built with the needs of an athlete in mind. They need a platform where they can communicate & interact with all stakeholders that they have, ie Coaches, Teammates, Agents, Sponsors, Fans & Media. They also feel exposed on existing platforms as they get a lot of mean comments & even threats.
Iplay Sport offers a platform where the athlete can choose who will see a certain post & also if she/he wants to share it on any other social media. You can easily turn off the possibility to comment a post & we’ve built the system in a way that makes it impossible to do mentions if you’re not friends with that particular person that you want to mention. We will also hand out yellow cards to any user that writes a mean or hurtful comment & if that person does it again we’ll lock the account of the user for 6 months. We’ve also added services to Iplay that we know will be helpful to the athlete’s career (we call them Marketplaces) depending on where in your career you are. The three first Marketplaces will be released in May & are Financial advice, Job offerings & Insurance advice.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
We started with Handball in January 2016, then we added Ice Bandy & next up is football/soccer later this month. We’ll keep adding sports & already have users in 105 countries, so the market is global & every sport played… I could add some numbers but they are so big it’s almost hard to grasp.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Initially we have 4 revenue streams but we have a number of revenue streams in the pipeline as we grow.
- Licenses – will be sold to Clubs, Coaches & Agents. They need a license to be able to search in our database of athletes. You also get a premium version of our new communications tool that we’re releasing shortly.
- Transfers – once you’ve made a search you get a list of athletes who matches your criterias. In order to fetch that list you pay Iplay a fee and that fee varies depending on what level the athletes at. We’ve already been assisting in three transfers.
- Ads – we will have ads in Iplay Sport but instead of trashing people’s feed with sponsored ads we want the company to put their logo on the profile of the athlete/athletes that they want to sponsor. We’ll also share some of this revenue with the athlete. This is to give them an incentive to get as many followers as possible as well as to have them visit your profile as often as possible, as the sponsor pays an additional CPM price & the athlete gets a part of that to.
Ads/logos can also be put on a specific game & team that you wanna sponsor. The Club will also get a part of the revenue like an athlete.
- Market places – Companies or Institutes that has products or services that they want to promote to our users they can do that under our Marketplaces. The first three will be Financial Advice, Job offerings & Insurance advice. The response we’ve had from these companies has been extremely good. We will also have Market places for Mental coaches, E-learning, Personal trainers, Equipment etc.
- Future revenue stream
TeamChat – a new communication tool that we’re launching within a month. A tool we know Clubs & Coaches are looking for that will be very helpful to them. TeamChat will be available in a freemium & a premium version.
Avatar – we’ll present an avatar to each user where they can list their gear. This will be very interesting to sponsors as well as to us. We’ll be gathering vast amounts of user data that we’ll be able to monetize in this.
5. Management Team – with titles
Per Malmqvist – CEO
Karl Sjöblom – COO
David Johansson – CTO
6. Anything else you want the audience to know about your venture?
We’re raising another 3 MSEK at the valuation of 18 MSEK pre-money.