Utrecht-based Mingle Sport, a sports tech startup, announced on Friday that it has secured €1.25M funding from a seed round led by angel investors and Dutch multinational Rabobank.
Mingle Sport says it will utilise the funds to scale its operations on a global level and launch its premium AI product for coaches and players.
“We’re very excited to open our app to the international grassroots football community,” says Freek Bijl, co-founder of Mingle Sport.
“We’ve seen a huge need from teams in pro-level stats and content, with low barriers to entry in terms of setup and cost. Our goal is to provide a solution with our app, and help the enormously underserved community of grassroots athletes out there,” adds Bijil.
Mingle Sports: Grassroots football app
Founded by Nicky Rog and Freek Bijl in 2021, Mingle Sport is a grassroots football app that helps football teams track their performance, share interesting highlights, and manage their team.
The app was launched as a public beta in the Netherlands in the summer of 2022, and used by thousands of teams over the course of the season.
Following the positive responses, the Dutch startup has now opened up its app to a global audience and is available to use in Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand.
The app is free to download and available on iOS & Android, with a premium offering arriving in early 2024. The company is planning to introduce premium AI-powered features for grassroots football teams by 2024.
“We want teams and clubs to really own their content and data. So they can create value from it. We’re doing some very interesting experiments with clubs around various pricing mechanisms and will start to introduce premium products in 2024,” says the founding duo.
The features are expected to offer unique stats & content for teams, as well as additional benchmarking and automatic video highlights.
Nicky Rog, co-founder of Mingle Sport, says, “We want to offer coaches and players a product for any team that wants to get started with sports tech. Not only top-tier amateur athletes, but also regular athletes and enthusiasts. That’s why we use devices people already own, starting with their mobile phones.”
Mingle Sport claims that it is regularly compared with Strava, the popular running & cycling app. The Dutch startup offers a similar combination of technology to track performance and community to share and compare.
“It’s great to be compared to an app such as Strava”, says Bijl. “Similar to them, our mobile app allows teams to start having more insights and fun with their performance. Our goal is to eventually integrate with the best sports tech solutions out there across a variety of ball sports.”
01
Empowering Ukrainian Startups: Highlights from the PowerUp Ukraine 2024 Conference