Talented football players in one place – Number of users of Playerhunter social network growing, opening of representation in England planned

Around 80,000 users, primarily young football players aged 13 to 18, from all over the world, have created their profiles on the innovative social network Playerhunter so far. This makes them more visible to the global football community and makes it easier for them to find a club.

This specific platform for sportsmen was created by the eponymous company two years ago, and the year 2017 was crucial for its development. The founders expect Playerhunter to have 500,000 users by the end of the year.

Thanks to its results, the company was one of the finalists for the Aurea 2018 investment of the year award, handed out by our portal. The jury recognized the potential for success of the project and awarded it with a special recognition for the market potential.

– In the past year, the focus was on technical perfecting of the platform, and in 2018, we will focus on having the number of users grow and on having them engaged, as well as on advertising through our platform, which will provide to our clients from the field of sports a unique space for the promotion of products and features – says Stefan Dobric, CFO at Playerhunter.

The uniqueness of Playerhunter consists of its ability to connect the exporting markets of football players (Southeast Europe) with importing ones (Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Great Britain), with a view to affirming lower-league players, who often don't have an efficient way of promoting themselves.

– Of all other sports social networks, we have the most video uploads by users – over 5,000 – Dobric points out.

As he explains, according to FIFA's data, around 100 million of the total of 265 million football players are active in lower leagues, and clubs often don't have the money for traveling or for having a scout network, so it's more efficient for them to filter talented players through Playerhunter. The remaining 165 million play in amateur leagues, which are Playerhunter's secondary target group.

– To a young, good football player, this is an opportunity to become visible and to carve a career path. Our goal is to motivate them to create their profiles as well as possible, so that scouts and managers could find them easily. Also, this facilitates the finding of potential new football stars for talent scouts – our interviewee adds and points out that their goal is not just to increase the number of users, but to also have them be actively involved and connected.

– The more active the user is, the more valuable they are to us and our clients – Dobric says.

– Playerhunter does not take a percentage from a realized transfer, but aims to facilitate communication in the football community and to filter talented players.

Crowdfunding campaign

According to the announcements, Playerhunter has an exciting period ahead of it, as they are preparing for a crowdfunding campaign in order to finance further development and achieve their goals through the British Crowdcube platform.

(Stefan Dobric receiving special Aurea 2018 award for market potential)

– Crowdcube enables a large number of investors to invest an amount they find suitable, and an average investment is around EUR 1,000 – Dobric says and invites interested investors who want to take part in financing the growth of Playerhunter to contact them.

He adds that they are also negotiating with funds they met at the Belgrade Venture forum, where they won last year in the competition of 30 startups from the region.

In the meantime, they are preparing a serious promotion.

– We are being helped in this by the Virgin Startup Accelerator, a part of the British multinational Virgin Group, and we were selected as one of 9 participants from over 100 applicants. We have also done a video with football stars from the Premier League, Dusan Tadic and Christian Fuchs, who are also helping us with the promotion – our interviewee says.

Dobric points out that they are looking to open a representation in England, and regarding long-term plans, he emphasizes that they will be working on new algorithms, such as the following of the career progress of a football player. He also announces new features on the platform.

Camps

This July, Playerhunter will organize five camps for young football players in Austria in cooperation with FC Koln, which is another way for them to attract users and have them create their profiles. They already organized one such camp in Vienna this January.

– Aside from being an opportunity for young football players to learn and progress, this is a source of revenues for us, which can be used to further finance innovations in the platform's operations.

EUR 1.2 million invested

Private investors and business angels have invested around EUR 1.2 million in the development of the Playerhunter social network so far. Although it was founded in Belgrade, the company is now registered in the EU (Austria) due to easier communication and contacts with investors, but it has an office in the capital of Serbia.

T.B.

Playerhunter SRB d.o.o. Beograd

Playerhunter

eKapija

Stefan Dobric

Crowdcube

Belgrade Venture forum

Dusan Tadic

Christian Fuchs

social network for football players

social network for sportsmen

recruiting football players

online recruiting of football players

recruiting football players online

football camps

talented football players

Virgin Startup Accelerator

football scouts

football managers