Meet SparkUp Studios - Sports and EventTech Program 2022 Cohort

As we finish our third week of this year’s Sports and EventTech program, we are excited to introduce another member of the 2022 cohort- SparkUp Studios.  We met with SparkUp Studios founders Luke Santamaria and Matt Fenby to learn about their first product, SportzFan, and their mission to optimise fan communities.

Sports fans are becoming increasingly digitally-oriented while sports teams, and their sponsors, are still using outdated methods to connect. The team at SparkUp Studios recognise this disparity and saw how it's leading to poor fan engagement.

With that, they created their first product, SportzFan. It's a white-labelled solution for connecting with, and commercialising, a more digitally-oriented audience. SportzFan uses tokenized, play-to-earn game mechanics which motivates fans to consume the content of their favourite sports teams, and their sponsors.

In addition to engaging digitally-savvy fans, SportzFan will also bring a first-party data channel to sports teams and their sponsors. This will provide fan-behaviour data so teams and their sponsors can offer hyper-personalised consumer experiences.

As the discussion evolves, Luke and Matt shared their individual takeaways from selection day. Luke was excited about the deep industry experience across the mentors they spoke with and Matt enjoyed being asked about, and given advice on their business model. He was encouraged, as a starting point, to look into the selectivity of the teams and clubs they work with and how to grow a critical mass of fans.

SparkUp Studios is a relatively early-stage startup and its founders have three main objectives they hope to accomplish through the Startupbootcamp accelerator process.

• They want to develop a solid commercial strategy for both sports teams and their sponsors;
• They want to improve their product-market fit by refining their product;
• And they want to learn from the wide range of Startupbootcamp mentors to become investment ready.

Interested in SparkUp Studios’ vision for sports fan engagement? You can apply to become a mentor for the Sports and EventTech program here.