New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series will be to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company: Fan Hub
CEO: Gareth Lippiatt
Headquarters: London, England
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Fan Hub is a platform that connects professional sport clubs with their fans. The benefit to the fanbase is two-fold: firstly, we aggregate and segment the digital content, providing a single news feed incorporating content from the major social media platforms.
Secondly, fans can use our dashboard to make their arrangements for the big match and book their parking, train ticket, hotels, restaurant or takeaway. Every time they book through our partner brands, they earn cashback on their purchase.
The benefit for the club is that we migrate their crowd into an engaged community, providing them with insight into what content is working best on which platforms and with which segments.
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2. Problem & Solution
The cost of watching live sport is an issue for fans and Fan Hub rewards them financially for their loyalty.
Fans also have an insatiable appetite for digital content, though with an increasing number of media platforms, it isn’t easy to find all the content that they want amongst the ‘noise’. Fan Hub consolidates the content into one newsfeed, which fans can then engage with and share on their platform of choice.
Clubs are seeking mechanisms to engage and ultimately monetise ‘digital fans’ (who may be distributed throughout the world) and Fan Hub provides them with a platform that achieves this.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Ultimately our target market is every fan of every professional club in every sport around the globe. But for now we are concentrating on domestic UK football fans.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We retain the first £5 per fan per year that is earned in cashback through the platform, though re-segmenting the market to create an efficient ecosystem through personalised advertising is likely to become the core revenue driver in the medium term.
5. Management Team – with titles
Gareth Lippiatt – CEO
Amit Maheshwari – Chief Information Officer
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
Fan Hub is a spin-out from Cambridge University’s business school and was launched through Accelerate Cambridge in Autumn 2014. We’ve been signing up commercial partners (such as: TripAdvisor, Trainline, Lastminute.com, Just Eat) and refining the product for 18 months and launch the platform at the start of the 2016/17 season in a partnership with a Premier League club. We’re also raising a seed round imminently so if the vision sounds exciting, get in touch through www.fan-hub.com
Bonus Question: If you were stuck on a desert island with any three athletes, who would they be and why?
Sam Vokes, Ashley Barnes and Andre Gray. Those three play up front for Burnley and if they were stuck on a desert island for the next month or so, that would certainly help my team (Boro) make it back to the Premier League!