Playerhunter discovering new talents – Social network for athletes expects million users by May 2018

According to FIFA's data, there are currently more than 265 million registered football players globally. The Balkans region is heading the European list, whereas, globally, it is in the third spot, when it comes to "exporting" players.

The new social network for athletes, Playerhunter, enables players and clubs to connect. Former Partizan player Vuk Zivkovic, along with his friend Stevan Radak, started developing this sport startup two years ago. Playerhunter recently placed among the 50 most innovative sports companies in the world, and today it has 20 employees and 20,000 users, primarily football players from the Balkans, Southeast Asia, Turkey and East Africa. Among them are Vladimir Petrovic Pizon, Vujadin Savic, players from Red Star, Partizan, Cukaricki...

Zivkovic arrived at the idea of establishing a startup when he noticed that a lot of his colleagues had a problem of putting themselves on the market and finding a suitable club and a good manager. He decided to create a social network for players, managers, agents, scouts, clubs...

The first investments were made with personal funds, and then support came from Austria, whose capital city now houses the headquarters of Playerhunter.

– The seat is located in Vienna, as it is much easier to apply and get an investment if a company is registered in the European Union. In Belgrade, we have an LLC and a development center. After iterating with two prototypes, we managed to collect close to a million euros for the development of the complete version of the network, which was launched in June. We want Playerhunter to be a recruiting platform, enabling people from the field of sports to stay in touch with their acquaintances, to contract new jobs, but also to enable young football players to apply to foreign academies, camps... – Darko Mandic, Marketing Manager at Playerhunter, says in his interview for eKapija.

Those who invest in Playerhunter are business people from the USA, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Germany... As our interviewee says, they expect another investments of EUR 2 million to be made soon.

Although Playerhunter is open to all athletes, they are oriented towards football for now, despite the fact that, as Mandic, says, it's a conservative sport – slow to accept change and adapt to new technologies.

– We are oriented towards football as, according to FIFA, there are 265 million registered football players. Around 95% of them play in the lower leagues, and clubs are often unable to travel, they lack a scout network... This platforms provides them with all those things – Mandic explains and adds that their goal is to present Playerhunter to all “big names in football” in the coming period.

Help to managers

Though the application cannot substitute for real managers, it largely facilitates their job. Playerhunter enables managers to establish direct contact with football players. Players can upload their digital CVs with videos from games and training sessions.

This social network, among other things, offers to its users to take part in camps of big world clubs, such as FC Barcelona and City Football Performance Program Manchester City. Interested players apply through the network, and those selected may attend the camp for free, our interviewee clarifies.

Playerhunter doesn't charge a percentage from transfers and does not sign contracts, and the platform is free to use.

– Our big advantage is that Vuk and several other people in the team have fantastic contacts in the world of sports. We got our first users that way. Still, these are only initial activities, and the idea is to achieve global growth – Mandic explains and emphasizes that their plan is to have a million users in May 2018.

As he says, the goal is to keep the users and to add various types of content in the coming period.

– The countries we will focus on in the coming period, and from which we expect the majority of users to come, are Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Poland, as well as the countries of the Balkans – he adds.

Aside from the offices in Serbia and Austria, Playerhunter has representatives in Poland and Brazil as well. This startup plans to establish a Playerhunter foundation, which will invest in undeveloped areas with the help of their partners, so that all children would be able to play football both in Serbia and abroad.

S.S.