SportyFi - Decentralized sports investment & funding ecosyst

Sports occupy unique cultural real estate and unify us in a way that nothing else does. Today, this is almost a $7 trillion business industry involving countless participants in areas that span far from sports yards into marketing and sponsorship, sports media, sports facilities and institutions. However, sport has also become a business with intricate ties to political and private interest, leaving an open door for non-transparency and power play. As the majority of revenues go to high-end entities, it is not athletes or clubs who reap the rewards of their continuous effort.

On the contrary, being professionally involved in sports means much more than only competing. It takes a tremendous amount of talent, passion and discipline, as well as money to be able to afford all the training and equipment expenses. Athletes, especially up-and-coming ones at the outset of their professional careers, face many issues when it comes to funding their training and participation in worldwide competitions. In such a challenging environment, only a few actually beat the odds and make it to the professionals.

SportyFi is about to change that. On the one hand, we are giving both fans and potential investors the tools to directly participate in one of the biggest and fastest growing industries; whereas on the other, we are allowing sports community to raise funds independently across the world. By removing high-end intermediaries, we are disrupting the existing model of sports participation financing and returning sports back to its core values.

SportyFi will work as a decentralized sports ecosystem, utilizing smart contract capacities and other benefits of blockchain revolution to minimize administration and logistic costs and to maximize the speed and security of the transactions between the participants in the new sports economy.

THE PROBLEM
Sport has become a lucrative form of business, where much of the revenue does not go point-blank to the creators of value. Many professional athletes, clubs and sports organizations struggle with severe financial and liquidity issues, lacking channels, means and connections to monetize their fans’ attentions.

ATHLETES
By being exposed solely to the stories of success, the public is often unaware of the struggles of the majority left-behind. But, the statics is eye-opening and faces us with a different kind of reality. For most of the up-and-coming talents at the outset of careers, becoming a professional athlete is extremely challenging as they are faced with cultural, systemics and especially economics obstacles on its path.

CLUBS AND SPORT ORGANIZATIONS
There are several organizational and capacity issues for clubs and organizations, including human resources, accommodation, management, financing and external orientation. Such multidimensional framework is even more difficult for minor clubs and leagues as the funding is all too often concentrated on larger, elite provisions.

FANS AND INVESTORS
Sports has an immense power to build stronger, more connected communities. Fans who love a particular sport are enthusiastic to get an opportunity to back, support and cheer for an athlete or organization they feel strongly about, leading us to believe the role, played by supporters in the economic model of sports, should be reconsidered.

THE MARKET
Sports industry, projected to have grown $145 billion between 2010-2015, is a wide-reaching business in areas that span into marketing and sponsorship, sports media, sports facilities and institutions. In 2016, the global sports market, comprising of infrastructure, events, training and manufacturing and retail of sports goods (at one per cent of global GDP) was estimated to be worth around $600-700 billion.
Besides government, especially private sector and non-profit entities play a crucial role in the sports ecosystem. However, the competition is also higher than ever and there are only few organizations at its high-end, controlling the majority and prices of the market. This brings in non-transparency, extensive and often unreasonable costs and unfair deals for athletes and sports.

OUR SOLUTION
SportyFi, a decentralized sports ecosystem, will not only add an additional player to the sports industry, it will rather establish a completely new (sub)industry and create blockchain-based possibilities which were not possible or existing up to date. To achieve this, SportyFi will launch a Smart Manager Platform and a SportyFi Professional Fund.
SportyFi‘s Smart Manager Platform will enable donations, detailed sponsorship smart contracts of various types, as well as complex investment smart contracts, where an athlete, a club or another sports organization will offer a long-term deal for a share of their future income or other revenue stream in exchange for an upfront investment.
SportyFi’s Token Crowdsale will also allocate a part of the funds raised to a special SportyFi Professional Fund. The fund will invest in those athletes with the greatest potential in exchange for future return, based on, for example, prize money, image rights, transfer fees, and other rights of an athlete, depending on the type of sport. A team of sports industry advisors and professionals with a proven track record will analyze and select those athletes with the greatest potential to invest in, facilitating growth of the fund and the whole SportyFi ecosystem.
By setting up the SportyFi Smart Manager Platform and SportyFi Professional Fund, we will provide the sports and investment community a healthy ecosystem with a huge growth potential. The ecosystem will enable investors to harness and monetize the athletic potential of up-and-coming stars – who, until now, often didn’t have the means to finance their career.