August was a pivotal month for our company as we launched the public beta of Tournated and completed the full transition from the old Vertexo Sports platforms. This transition involved over 200 sports organizations and 20,000 athletes adapting to a new user experience, resetting accounts, and learning how to navigate the new platform.

Although Tournated offers a more user-friendly, feature-rich, fast, and scalable solution, migrating to a completely new platform is challenging for both our users and our team. To support this transition, we prepared comprehensive documentation, conducted demos, and provided 24/7 support for the first two weeks of August. This ensured that everything worked as expected and allowed us to address user feedback by improving the user experience and adding critical features and adjustments.

In this monthly update, we’d like to highlight the key changes and improvements compared to our previous solution. And as this is our first update, we also want to introduce Tournated, the team behind it, and our mission.

Tournated

Tournated is an all-in-one sports management software that empowers sports organizations to efficiently manage, grow, and monetize their operations. Our solution allows organizations to create custom online platform(s), automate and simplify the management of leagues, clubs, tournaments, and other events, boost audience engagement, and process payments effortlessly.

Our white-label solution is well-suited for sports ministries, federations, and other organizations seeking to unify all their operations and activities under a single hub, and facilitate the collection, management of sports-related data. play.tournated.com serves as a self-service platform and data aggregator, delivering valuable insights into sports activities.

Team & Mission

Tournated was founded by Nikita Ribakovs, Julia Chubarova, Mihails Samoilovs, and Roberts Ribakovs, who are world, continental, and national champions in eight different sports. Having actively participated in sports development at both international and national levels, they have experienced firsthand the limitations imposed by outdated technology.

Our team is driven to revolutionize the sports industry with Tournated, aiming to significantly enhance sports development. We seek to make sports management not only more accessible but also financially beneficial. Many sports developers are volunteers and enthusiasts who invest their time and resources without tangible returns. We are here to change that.

Tech Update

In this section, we highlight the new features and tech updates we’ve achieved over the past month. As this is our first monthly update, we will also outline the primary (general) improvements / features compared to our previous MVP solution.

• Comprehensive Dashboard: Manage platforms, organization members, leagues, tournaments, clubs, teams, coaches, and more, all from one place. The dashboard includes features for analytics, accounting, galleries, news, and other essential tools for managing and growing your sports organization.
• Advanced League Management: Customize your ranking and tournament categories, configure a points scoring system, create a tournament calendar, set up fact sheets for organizers, and update rankings with just a few clicks.
• Third-Party Integrations: Connect your rankings to international tours and platforms like ITF, TE, FIDE, DUPR, and more.
• Improved Tournament Management: Organizers can now set up multiple payment methods, add dynamic (price-driven) additional questions for participants, apply discounts and promo codes, and more. Tournament draws, groups, and order of play have become significantly more functional on both desktop and mobile. Automated draws for main, qualification, and consolation segments are now available, along with an enhanced order of play in timeline, grid, and bird’s-eye views.
• My Career: Players can easily track and manage all their activities and progress in one centralized location.
• User Experience on Mobile: In August, we focused extensively on enhancing the user experience, particularly for mobile users. We reviewed the entire platform to ensure that even when using the web version on mobile devices, the experience is as smooth as possible, providing a feel similar to that of a mobile app.

New Federations

In August, we signed and onboarded three national sports federations: the Latvian Chess Federation, the Polish Pickleball Federation, and the Latvian Pickleball Federation. Additionally, we have received commitments from 10 more national federations (in 4 different sports) for the 2025 season.

Events

In August, we attended the National Polish Pickleball Tournament, the National Estonian Pickleball Tournament, and the International Beach Tennis Tournament in Estonia, representing our platform. Additionally, as part of our fundraising and networking strategy, we participated in Riga Startup Day: BBQ and joined the BADidea.fund Fundraising School.

In September, we have planned two trips to Lithuania, including meetings with major national federations and attending the Sports Biz Vilnius 2024 conference at the end of the month. We will also participate in an international pickleball tournament in Poland, an international pickleball tournament in Latvia, and the Chess Olympiad 2024 in Budapest.

Business Model / Monetization

Currently, Tournated is in a transitional period and does not have mandatory transactional monetization enabled, except for online payments. However, starting October 1, 2024, a service fee will be applied to every transaction made through the platform (including license purchases, tournament registrations, and online bookings), whether conducted online or onsite.

Our goal is to help sports organizations grow and improve their financial situations. Our business model is designed to provide free or highly affordable solutions for sports organizations, with a portion of our net revenue dedicated to the continuous support of sports development.

Standard Service Fee Structure:

• Entries: 3.5% to 4.5% depending on the organization's volume, with a minimum fee of 75 cents
• Licenses: 8% to 12% depending on the organization's volume, with a minimum fee of 2.25 EUR
• Bookings: 3.5% to 4.5% depending on the organization's volume, with a minimum fee of 75 cents

Please note that a payment processing fee, charged by the payment provider, is added to each online payment. Additionally, we offer sports organizations the opportunity to add their own fees to support the growth of their treasury for sports development. We do not add any fees to free or charitable events.

Stats (August 2024)

• Number of tournaments: 74
• Number of entries: 1801
• Number of new athletes / users: 494

Fundraising and Partnerships Program

In August, we launched a seed round to accelerate our growth and expand into new markets, along with a partnership program for brands interested in promoting their products or services within our network.

For more information, please contact us at hello@tournated.com or +37125382649.