New technology from startup ventures is transforming the global sports industry. The mission of this series is to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story and pitch their idea. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for inclusion in this series.
Company: BANDWAGON
CEO: Harold Hughes
Headquarters: Greenville, SC
1. What is your elevator pitch?
BANDWAGON is an engagement and data collection platform that gives fans more control over who they resell their tickets to while significantly reducing their transaction costs. Our platform serves fans and teams. Fans are able to protect home-field advantage while making more money on each sale. Teams are given actionable data to have a better understanding of who actually shows up on game day, while decreasing fraudulent issues.
2. Problem & Solution
The two problems that we are solving go hand in hand: poor game day experience and declining stadium attendance. As technology advances, “the couch” has become superior to the “the stadium”, especially when you consider the ability to watch several games at once without paying $50+ for parking and long lines at the restroom. For the fans that do choose to go to the game, they’re left with an experience that lacks the social connection that they desire. We surveyed over 45,000 fans and “Game Day Atmosphere” ranked number 1 as their most important indicator of their game day experience with “Seat Location” coming in as a close second. The typical fan that attends games today look much different than the fans that attended games 30 years ago. Because of this, the “perfect seat” is no longer the 50-yard line seats. For some fans, it may be a family friendly section for a family outing. For others, it may be a seat in the shade because of a medical condition.
On the other side of the equation, we have schools and teams. Due to the thriving secondary market (companies like StubHub and VividSeats), schools and teams have no way of knowing who actually attends the events, creating a disconnect between the organization and the fan. This lack of transparency costs teams millions of dollars a year as they have no way to directly engage fans that buy on the secondary market.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Our target market is the college sports fan. To a larger scale, we will target sports fans from all over but for now, we’re heavily focused on the college football market. In 2015, over 49 million college football fans attended games in person – that’s more than 3 times the size of the NFL attendance! So for us, we believe that we’re targeting a highly passionate fan base that resells their tickets into a more than $4 billion ticket resale industry. By focusing on these fans, we’re able to give teams a better picture of who actually attends games, giving them ability to do better marketing, build better offerings, and increase their engagement with their fans. Colleges and teams across the country are competing with the at-home experience for fans. Our goal is to build a platform that helps teams connect more deeply with their fan bases and for fans to have a better community experience inside stadiums.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We generate revenue in 3 main ways. From fans, we collect transaction revenue. Buyers are charged 10% of the listed ticket price while sellers are charged a flat rate of $10 (this gives us an economic advantage over our competitors as ticket prices rise). We also have an optional membership fee that is $19.99 which operates as a mini-booster club membership for sports fans. From schools, we have variable pricing opportunities based on the level of engagement and the project packages that they would like to implement. For brands, we execute marketing campaigns and charge per campaign as well as per record for the data used in the campaigns.
5. Management Team – with titles
Harold Hughes Founder, CEO
Samotria Holmes, President
Hao Wu, VP of Finance & Operations
La-Vaughnda Taylor, VP of Brand Strategy
Nick Shepherd, Director of Development
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
We’re LIVE! My team spent the entire offseason to build a platform for college sports fans and now that we’re up and running, we’d love your thoughts and feedback. And don’t worry if you don’t see tickets for your team just yet – we’re rolling out across the entire country!
Bonus Question: If you were to invite any CEO to dinner who would it be and why?
Peter Thiel. As a first-generation American raised by Jamaican parents, I would talk to him about how his family background affected his view of what he thought he could accomplish while growing up. Naturally, I’d talk to him about how he went about changing the world of payments by Co-founding PayPal, and lastly, how he’s managed to continue leading and innovating in various fields including Palantir and Founders Fund. I am strongly motivated by the “mafia” mentality with what he was able to create with the PayPal team.
