Dutch Sport Tech Fund
invests in Scala Sports

Today it is announced that Dutch Sport Tech Fund is investing in the Dutch company Scala Sports. The scale-up recently signed a deal with the United States Tennis Association (USTA), outcompeting American rivals. The investment from Dutch Sport Tech Fund will be used to professionalize the organization and further scale up in the United States.

Founders Leon Haverkamp and Bart van Monsjou came up with the idea for Scala Sports when they were both working abroad and discovered how difficult it was to spontaneously play a game of tennis with others. Haverkamp: “In other countries, you are expected to become a member of a club or league. That’s when we quickly came up with the idea for a digital platform that offers much more freedom and convenience. That’s how Scala Sports was born, now over six years ago.”

Scala Sports is a flexible competition platform for tennis and padel. “You play whenever you want, just like you would book a yoga class or sports session online whenever you feel like it,” says Haverkamp. Scala Sports is used by the American and Dutch tennis federations, who use a white-label version of the app. Around 70,000 players use the Scala Sports platform. 

America is the first country outside the border that Scala Sports is targeting. There, clubs are less important and play more often takes place at the city level. Scala Sports is active in about ten cities there. “We hope to serve 300 American cities in the coming years. That means we need to expand and professionalize our team, from IT to service staff. That’s also what we’re going to use the growth capital for. By the way, we don’t just want to scale up the platform internationally, we also want to add more sports. Think beyond tennis and padel to other racket sports like pickleball and badminton, and later even golf.”

Those are not the only ambitions of the founders of Scala Sports; the company sees multiple paths to growth. “At the moment, tennis players play in a pool or a ladder, but we want to add other competition formats. We want to make more use of gamification on the platform, so that people play even more matches. In addition, we are exploring the possibility of coaching players through the app.”

Dutch Sport Tech Fund had been following Scala for almost two years. They found its market leadership in the Netherlands promising, but only saw the deal with USTA as the starting signal for globalization and thus investment. Scala Sports has therefore waited relatively long (six years) to raise its first major investment. “In Dutch Sport Tech Fund, we find a partner with knowledge of and a broad network in the sector. In the market we are in, building relationships is very important. That is exactly what the fund helps us with. We also appreciate being able to spar with experts in the field of sports and entrepreneurship. We are not the first scale-up to scale, so we hope to learn a lot from the network of Dutch Sport Tech Fund.”