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Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Athleague's social network made to organize sports leagues
By Lynette F. Cornell
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Athleague Inc.
Headquarters: Boston
Phone: 857-246-9094
Email: rmishra@athleague.com
URL: www.athleague.com
Founded: 2007
Employees: 5
In the company’s own words:
“Athleague provides an organizational web solution for sports leagues, giving league managers tools to handle signups, payments, scheduling, communication and more. This is wrapped up in a social network that encourages interaction and engages end users – the players of the league.”
People behind the company:
Prior to founding Athleague, Ravi Mishra, co-founder and CEO, was an intern at startups Mashery and MyBlogLog. Co-founder Mark Boudreau, vice president of engineering, previously worked as a research and design developer at Orange, a brand of France Telecom. Other former Orange employees include Athleague chief technology officer Benoit Simon and Nelson Lai, Athleague’s lead UI/UX engineer. Lee Hower, co-founder of NextView Ventures, serves as an adviser to the company.
The technology:
The web-based platform allows the administrators of sports leagues, specifically collegiate intramural leagues, to manage player signup, process participation fee payments and schedule sports matches. On the user side, players can track league and individual player stats, game scores and scheduled matches. The system allows organizers and players to contact each other within the site. The company monetizes the platform, which is free to use, through three channels: collecting a percentage of participation fees that league administrators process through the site, referral sales of sports goods and embedded branding and product education on the site.
The market:
The company is currently targeting the collegiate intramural sports space. According to Mishra, that market consists of six to eight million student athletes, a demographic primarily aged 18 to 24 with about two-thirds men and one-third women. Long-term, the company is seeking to tap into the 60 million to 65 million amateur athletes it estimates are in the United States.
Athleague has 30 universities around the country using the platform, including MIT, Boston College and Tufts. Mishra estimates the global market for the company’s platform at $1 billion annually, which includes SaaS, payment processing and advertising.
The pitch:
Athleague currently has a partnership with Reebok for its embedded site branding but is seeking new business partnerships with other sports brands and is considering forming partnerships with food delivery providers to allow users to purchase services such as post-game pizza delivery. The company is not actively raising cash but is open to discussions on its next funding round, which Mishra said will be in the $1 million to $4 million range and begin early next year. The company plans to use the cash to expand into other areas that their management system can apply to, including Little League, corporate leagues, charity tournaments and other sports competitions. The company is also considering related applications, such as team management and event registrations.
The competition:
Athleague cites Active.com’s eTeamz as its major competitor, but Mishra said Athleague differentiates itself by having better functionality. Other competitors include team management websites, as well as primarily desktop-based league management websites, said Mishra.
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