Unifying millions is the world’s fastest growing sport: football (or “soccer” to Americans). Diego Román is the Founder & CEO of Pelotea, a San Francisco Founder Institute portfolio company pioneering soccer management. Offering a customizable soccer league and player manager mobile application, Pelotea is a subscription SaaS platform that addresses 90% of soccer league managers and field owners who manage their businesses manually or inefficiently (according to their exectuive summary from 2017). Through the SaaS startup, thousands of leagues and teams can chip the ball over their obstacles and opponents, and score their goals. According to their Twitter,
Pelotea is a soccer league management platform that provides insurance to the players and incorporates sponsor interaction and rewards
The startup makes it easy to connect with players, teams, leagues, and fields that are in your soccer community. Users can create player profiles, interact with one another, and track soccer related activities. They can track match times, save game highlights, and enter goals all in real time. Viewers can also watch live streamed games via DirecTV.
With access to players’ statistics, Pelotea makes it easy to analyze, share, and compare players against friends and professionals. Players can be rated and ranked globally and in turn, scouts and managers can efficiently search for new players and build amateur level teams with this information.
The numbers
Globally there are over 270 million soccer players. The team at Pelotea estimates that for every 1,000 players there is a field, and that for every 500 players there is a league. That puts their estimates at 540,000 leagues. This makes Pelotea the MVP of league management.
Simplified logistics
Teams are logistical nightmares. Pass the logistics to Pelotea, and you’ll be able to kick these nightmares out of bounds. Using the soccer application, managers can speed up the game and see field availability, book the venue, and pay for reservations online, all in one location. Find a place to train right away, and play games without worrying about when the field will be available again next.
Through the application, soccer managers can organize their player’s schedules and directly message the team members. Users can access calendars, and study results from past games. A reminder system is built into the application to more efficiently communicate with league administrators and other Pelotea users. Remove phone calling, WhatsApp messaging, and long email chains from your logistic practices. With Pelotea, players can focus on the real game: getting things done quickly from one spot.
Benefits
Currently most league manager and field owner revenue goes to assistants, graphic designers, and marketing, and over 40% of their time is spent on paperwork. Through Pelotea, league managers can manage their operations more effectively, save time and money, increase their ROI, and grow their businesses. The ticket price for Pelotea subscriptions range from $30 to $80 per month, and their product includes the following services for soccer lovers globally. The soccer management software:
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Simplifies and automates management of leagues and field reservations
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Offers insurance for players
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Connects users to the soccer network
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Incorporates sponsor engagement and rewards
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Facilitates online payments
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Creates graphic designs
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Assists with growth in monthly users by 15-20% for field owners
Pelotea’s interactive community benefits from sponsors and partnerships. These relationships allow users to benefit from offerings which range from a month’s worth of Powerade for a team (Instagram, Jan 9, 2020) to free soccer game tickets. In the future Pelotea plans to score hosting international events like the Pelotea World Cup.
Based out of Quito, Ecuador and San Francisco, California and with their website available in Spanish, English, and French, Pelotea’s reach is already international. Through the growing community and social media channels, managers can access Pelotea’s 140,000 followers. Paired with followers in managers’ own networks, promotion costs will lower as ROI grows. The graphic designs the startup creates at no additional cost also help soccer managers promote their teams with the ease of a few clicks.
The opposing players are outmanned
The competitors offer one of the following: league management, field management, or a social network. Pleotea--in a league of its own--does all three. And because the startup focuses only on soccer, they offer subscribers ample opportunities for specialization, as opposed to their competitors, which focus broadly and try to capture all sports at the cost of fewer personalization features. In the soccer world, the competition is simply no match for Pelotea.
Technologies
The subscription platform uses the same technology as Instagram, which can scale to millions of users. For data protection they use Tensorflow to work on neural networks, which gives soccer league managers relevant information and thus helps them make better business decisions. Pelotea is positioned in the front and center with the latest technology standards such as Client Side application rendering and Restful API.
Pelotea is scouting for managers and soccer lovers. Ready to play? Sing up to join the team.
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