MatchKit (visit website)
Location: South Africa.
Sector: E-Sport
Africa is known for its myriad of sporting events ranging from Basketball, Football, Rugby, Tennis, Volleyball, etc. I remember playing a bit of Volleyball back in my Junior Secondary school. It was an entirely new scene as all we knew then was majorly Tennis and Football. Africans have a passion for sports irrespective of where they are across the continent of the earth. South Africans majorly have a passion for rugby as it is popular there over all other African countries. It is said that South Africa has the highest number of known rugby players, about 663,000 followed by New Zealand.
It was then of no shock when Bryan Habana, a 2007 Rugby World Cup Winner spoke to Mike Sharman, the CEO of MatchKit. They spoke about the need to help athletes with their personal and professional marketing. One of their main talking points was the lack of website adoption by athletes-rugby players in particular. This was how the journey all came up. Bryan Habana is thus a co-founder of MatchKit.
What MatchKit is really about
Launched on the 3rd of June, 2020. MatchKit is a DIY website builder that can be delivered in 5 minutes. It helps to showcase athletes’ pedigree to their fans and any interested parties. MatchKit was made to also help athletes generate additional income from merchandise sales and crowdfunding. It makes personal branding very relevant and accessible for athletes. It seamlessly integrates with all social media platforms making it easy for link sharing enabling visibility.
Most athletes go broke within the next five years of their professional career as a result of many reasons. One is the fact that they did not properly invest in their personal branding. Welcome MatchKit, the life-saver.
MatchKit is actively using 32 technologies for its website according to Builtwith. These include; Viewport Meta, iPhone/Android compatible, and SPF.
What solution does MatchKit provide
MatchKit provides athletes with a destination to host their social media and their key statistics. And also, to showcase their sponsors if any, selling merchandise and raising money for charitable events.
Like a digital CV, that incorporates the social aspects of Instagram and Facebook. Athletes pay a monthly subscription fee of $20 to access MatchKit. The StartUp is also recouping a fee on e-commerce sales. About 200 athletes are making use of MatchKit at the moment. Nearly close to 800 athletes have contacted them over the usage of the App. Athletes connected to MatchKit have had close to about 7.2 million fans with over 135,000 views of profiles.
It’s a platform where athletes manage their brands, earn more, engage their fans and sponsors. It, fortunately, offers all the features of a website giving them full control of their digital brands.
How to access the solution
The process is sleek and easy. As an Athlete, you can make use of the web-based app to set up a MatchKit website in five minutes. Simply register and connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Note, Instagram should be set to a ‘Business’ or ‘Creator’ account to enable the platform’s analytics functionality through secure APIs.
Few Months ago,
MatchKit recently partnered with the US Olympic swimming team, Red Bull South Africa and the full Uruguayan men’s rugby squad. The USA Women’s 7s rugby players also teamed up with MatchKit having 2.3 million engagements during the Olympics. They used their PR network to crowdfund the money to successfully get the South Africa hockey team to the Olympics. Meanwhile, the company has secured funding from AlphaCode Incubate earlier.
MatchKit has a fund closing of up to $80,000 in revenue since launch. They were able to crowdfund $20,000+ for South Africa Hockey to get to the Olympics. MatchKit crowdfunding portal provided more than $25,000 for Olympic medalists who were set to not receive a bonus for their exploits. The campaign put pressure on the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) and the sports ministry to award medalists at both the Olympics and Paralympics. MatchKit made the Heavy Chef top 5 startups in South Africa for 2020. To show their instant acceptance, they have been a lot of accolades. One of many includes being a finalist in Platform of the Year at Sports Industry Awards and a Gold for their tech team at the Smarties awards. After an incubation program at RMI AlphaCode, they got a $45,000 grant. MatchKit have 22 sporting codes from 14 different countries
Plans for the Future?
Usually, athletes pay a subscription fee of $20. Now, the approach is to target brands to sponsor athletes’ subscriptions. Therefore, we implore investors to look into this market which is yet to get so much attention. MatchKit also plans to move from a web-based platform to a full-blown app.
Launching in a pandemic where sports wasn’t active across the whole world was challenging but has been possible. This goes to show how well sportsmen have interacted with the platform. And if properly managed, MatchKit will be a leading force in the athlete’s branding industry. While there is no clarity over the reach of MatchKit, we hope the concerned authority will provide about that.