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: MySportsShare
CEO: Tony Hubbard
Headquarters: New York, New York
1. What is your elevator pitch?
MySportsShare is an online social media platform that lets organizations and athletes start a site, manage their activities, share their highlights, monetize their media and raise funds to keep playing sports
2. Problem & Solution
The problem is the sports world for fans online is ultra fragmented, while organizations and athletes’ world-wide are in a constant search for exposure and more revenue to play sports and run their programs. We are providing an innovative platform and untapped revenue source for most organizations and athletes, while also providing one community and resource for interested consumers. Our platform let’s you upload your sports media, monetizes the media, and then we share the funds with the user/organization once that media begins generating significant revenue ($50/month). So instead of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Baseball America and every other recruiting site on the Internet using your sports media to create money online, now you can too.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
We aim to eventually capture the worldwide competitive sports market, from organizations, teams and athletes, to all their fans. In the United States, we are targeting professional and semi-pro leagues of the non-major professional leagues, competitive youth organizations, training organizations and athletes that want to increase exposure to a worldwide audience or get recruited locally. We have an agreement with SDFL (States Developmental Football League) to be their official network for their inaugural season next year.
In Europe and other countries we are targeting the youth football/soccer organizations that are connected to their professional adult clubs. We are also approaching non-traditional European sports leagues, Baseball & American Football specifically, to join and increase their worldwide exposure. We have approached Real Madrid FC, Jamaica Football, Hong Kong youth basketball organizations.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We make money helping everyone else make money. We sell licensed career/recruiting pages to athletes, licensed websites to teams and licensed networks to organizations. These licenses are revenue sharing, and we monetize the media uploaded by the organizations and athletes on the website. We help administer payments on behalf of teams and leagues and we are poised to add subscription based channel services for all levels of our users. W also custom build enterprise software and manage it.
We are constantly coming up with more avenues of revenue within the traditional sports sales wheel to add to our site, and offer to our users.
5. Management Team – with titles
CEO/Founder: Tony Hubbard
Lead Engineer: Pradeep Mishra
Sales Manager: Katherine Rabiecki
Tech Advisor: Michael Mooring
Advisors: James Berman, Garrick Jones
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
We have also started to develop single user case applications to connect to the MySportsShare website. Currently we have released “MySportsCast” in the Android and iOS stores. You can easily add any sports event to the app, have anyone attending the event check into it, and then start sharing photos, videos and comments of what is happening at your sports event.
We believe everyone sports story is worth telling, and everyone’s sports media is valuable, because their community cares and consumes it. If we are successful, more sports programs will be funded, more athletes will find the right organization for themselves, and more organizations will have the financial firepower to succeed. We may even stop seeing the phenomenon of rich to broke athletes, as our platform can be a recurring revenue stream for former pros.
Bonus Questions:
If you were stuck on a desert island with any three athletes, who would they be and why?
Michael Jordan, Cam Newton, Bo Jackson because these are the kind of amazing athletes that have created highlights for us to love their entire lives in several sports. Their lives are my dream MySportsShare profiles, several sports, tons of highlights and worth more to their organizations, than their organizations were to them. Jordan is the reason the NBA is branded and marketed the way that it is, and possibly the most under paid athlete of all-time, because of his importance to that league and Nike. Also probably indirectly, one of the main reasons I went to UNC-Chapel Hill. Cam Newton will change the NFL forever and as long as he plays for them, he will keep the Carolina Panthers as relevant as a major market team. Bo Jackson is the most amazing athlete I have ever seen, and the way his career ended is of the saddest moments in sports history for me.
If you could go to any sporting event, what would it be and why?
A champions league final El Clásico, because I was born in Madrid, Spain and I’ve never seen one in real life. Looks like the most electric sporting event possible on TV.