Web platform out to help sports clubs
A team of brothers from Sydney have come to Wellington with hopes their digital startup can draw in and pass on $10,000 worth of sponsorship to every sports club in New Zealand.
Teamisto recently launched as a web-based platform to provide teams with an easy-to-use sports management tool and, more importantly, greater access to sponsorship dollars.
The goal was to raise $10,000 for the 20,000 sports clubs in Australia, which would net Teamisto $30 million a year in revenues.
Teamisto co-founder and chief executive Pat O’Reilly said he and brother Daniel, who is the company’s chief technology officer, came up with the idea having played football their entire lives, and realising the lack of funding many clubs struggled with.
‘‘We had this team management idea and we had this fundraising platform idea and we weren’t sure how it would all come together.’’
The result, Teamisto, launched earlier this year, has grown to support more than 500 users from 30 cities around the world.
Teamisto relied on clubs signing up their players to the website, which in turn allowed managers to send out training and match day notifications, sort out player availability, track statistics and results, and provide a forum for team discussions.
Crucially, however, the website linked to players’ Facebook pages which could provide potential sponsors with a greater audience than traditional sponsorship models.
O’Reilly was a sponsorship officer at his own football club and said he knew from experience the difficulty grassroots clubs had in getting commercial support.
‘‘You go to a business and you try to sell the benefits of sponsorship and it’s sort of a bit, you don’t really know what to say, it’s like, ‘we’ll put a sign up’. When you can sell the fact that there’s mobile advertising and it connects with Facebook and even if it sounds a bit buzz wordy at the start it’s actually tangible advertising and it’s not just a banner in the park.’’