Success story: building Sponsoo’s sports sponsorship marketplace

A great example of how important technology is in paving the success story of a company or startup is the sponsorship platform Sponsoo. I will summarize their initial idea and key emphases that together led us to success. Today, Sponsoo runs a digital marketplace for sports sponsorship, where brands and athletes find each other and agree deals on one platform.

The initial idea was based on the fact that there was a lack of solutions similar to Sponsoo concept.  It was essential that also the sports that are not so mainstream would get an opportunity. There were also taking into account companies that want to sponsor but do not have time to deal with smaller individuals.

Community power as a solution and a breakthrough

The first step was to consider the need to bring together several different smaller clubs within the platform and provide them with a single and adequately structured framework to present key data on membership, performance, world or national champions, social media presence data and much more.

On the other side, we have a larger company that is willing to invest a certain amount of money. On the Sponsoo platform, it can find athletes and clubs and agree on a set of deliverables in exchange for payment. The key guideline was for the company to get a concrete plan of how to invest and get the most in return.

Building a platform from the first steps onwards

This project was very demanding from the architectural point of view of building a platform, as all functions and steps had to be designed in a way to enable growth, but at the same time, we couldn’t oversize the project.

At easy.bi, we tackled the project agilely in line with our best practices. The goal was clear from the beginning: the platform had to be able to grow without its functionality or operation suffering as the number of users increased.

Therefore, the biggest challenge was how to design the platform architecturally and structurally in such a way that in each phase, we invested as optimally as possible in what was the next logical and most necessary step at a given moment. At the same time, we always made sure that the system worked smoothly at all times.

Fully digitized and automated processes

The platform is also very complex in terms of the back functions’ operation, as it allows both athletes and clubs on the one hand and sponsors on the other simplified use, adding their own description and highlighting the offer.

For athletes, the system works by creating a profile and connecting themselves with their club or team. Immediately after registration, they can create their offer. They describe what they are offering to their sponsor, e.g. advertising space, advertisement in a club magazine, promotion on social networks and so on. The Sponsoo platform supports the athlete to find the right sponsor as quickly as possible. When the sponsor accepts the offer, all the necessary steps for the mutual signing of the sponsorship agreement and monitoring of further activities are arranged within the platform.

For sponsors, the process is also simple and straightforward, as they register and can immediately choose from a number of sponsorship offers according to the desired parameters. This allows sponsors to reach their customers as targeted as possible and get the most out of their sponsorship. After the cooperation agreement, all steps are taken care of within the platform.

Sponsoo runs a digital marketplace for sports sponsorship that simplifies how deals are made. As the platform grew, we migrated it to a Kubernetes cluster in IBM Cloud, in cooperation with IBM. In a second phase, we built Solidity smart contracts with an Oracle that validates deliverables, so athletes are paid once the agreed deliverables are confirmed.