Sportunity was established by Niels Schut following his Sports Management and Organisation studies. As a tennis coach, he was concerned about the increasing individualisation of tennis as a sport.  In his search for a fitting solution, he established Netband.nl. On this online platform, tennis players could arrange to play whenever, wherever and with whomever they wanted. Tinder was not around back in 2012, but this site was a kind of Tinder for tennis players where the time and location could be arranged via the site. The business has grown rapidly since then, and today 16 professionals work at Sportunity.

The first sports associations are taking initial steps towards unaffiliated sporters

As Niels shared his knowledge, experience and vision with the KNLTB (Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association), other sports federations came into contact with this young innovator. One of those associations was the Royal Dutch Skating Federation, KNSB. Niels and his team developed a concept and business case for the KNSB. This resulted in a Sprint app developed by Sportunity where users could measure and record their skating achievements. The app uses a chip (on the ice skating rink) or the GPS feature on your telephone (inline and roller skating and outdoor skating).  Since its launch, the number of users has grown steadily, as has the app’s functionality. Today, the partnership has expanded to include multiple sports associations, including table tennis, badminton, billiard, sports cycling, petanque and skiing federations.

Active worldwide

While making the Sprint app, Sportunity came into contact with MYLAPS, a Dutch company that develops and supplies software for sporting events across the globe. This contact eventually led to the acquisition of the ‘active sports’ software branch of MYLAPS, making Sportunity responsible for the development and marketing of all event apps for MYLAPS events. This amounts annually to over 600 sporting events with 6 million participants from more than 200 countries.

The future

Thanks to the close partnership with MYLAPS, Sportunity’s growth continues to skyrocket. Besides the current market, Sportunity is developing a new market for government agencies, and more and more municipalities are getting involved. They want to know how much, where and by whom public spaces, sports associations and other sports accommodations are being used by people in their region. This will help them gain insight into the exercise behaviour of their residents to develop targeted policies. A partnership has been set up with the municipalities of The Hague, Arnhem, Oss, and local Apeldoorn to create a complete sports and exercise platform for districts and their residents.

Export countries: more than 200 countries