Jack Gillibrand on starting a sports management platform

Thanks to Jack Gillibrand from Soccer5s for doing an awesome job in answering all the questions.

Full Transcript available in the Sports Geek Nation Member's Area.

Here's the highlight question from the Sports Geek Nation AMA with Jack Gillibrand.

Jack Gillibrand is the Centre Manager for Soccer5s, a 5 & 7 a-side State of the art 3G Football Centre in Australia.

Jack started his sports business career in United Kingdom working on sales for Play Football. In 2011, whilst working as Head of Youth Recruitment at Blackpool Football Club, he founded Blackpool Elite Soccer, a junior football academy in the North West of England. After several years of building his career in UK, Jack made the move down under to Australia as Centre Manager at Soccer5s in Melbourne.

Soccer5s is a state of the art 5 and 7 a-side social football centre revolutionising Australian soccer. His main roles include overseeing day to day operations, strategy planning & business development as well as the marketing and sales of Soccer5s.

In Australia he recently co- founded Matchday, a sport management platform which looks to streamline social sport business’ whistle improving the player and fan experience.

In 2018, he became the President of Small Sided Football Association, an association that aims to develop a pathway for players from grassroots to excellence through small sided football across Melbourne at multiple venues for miniroos & juniors.

Connect with Jack Gillibrand on Twitter @jack_gillibrand, LinkedIn and Slack @Jack GIllibrand

Find out more about Soccer5s at soccer5s.com

Jack Gillibrand:

Hi James

There were a number of reasons for starting the platform. I first started playing 5-a-side at the age of 12 at school and was obsessed! Then heading into management which is nearly a decade within the industry now, I feel I know from both sides what it takes and what it needs, as a player & as a business.

I have the day to day frustrations from a management perspective, and i've absolutely no doubt other venues across the world have this, finding the ALL-IN-ONE system which can do “everything” and I mean, do everything. Which in the real world is a monster of a system, and doesn't exist…yet.

We've looked at various systems, and to be fair Australia does provide a fantastic range but not the monster I was looking for, so breaking it down – it needs to be ticking the boxes for all the stakeholders involved. Along with my co-founder we've scoped out what we think the social sport industry needs, here's a brief;

1. The business itself to run day to day operations clean & effectively including comp management, client management, marketing, staff & player communication, storage, document management, online registration and so on
2. A Referee app – have a real time scoring app which allows refs to enter scores as the games happen which talks to the competition management platform and the players
3. A Player app – increase player experience at the venue by having an app to manage player profiles, manage teams, register teams, track real time player stats and player history, player rating, team communication, team payments

Some existing platforms offer components we've been looking for, so we've looked into how we can partner and tap into like minded existing apps to “plug-in” with their api.

Let me know if that answers those questions James, thanks for the question

• How do you market Soccer5s to potential players? How does it fit in the football ecosystem?
• What is your view or knowledge of the current landscape and how does Soccer5's see their growth strategy please?
• What is the gap that Matchday fills?
• How would you estimate the market size in Australia and who is serving it?
• How progressed is Matchday as a digital tool, is it used internally at this stage?
• What are some of the biggest ‘pain points’ for your customers? How are you using technology to manage these currently?

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