Founder/CEO Scorito:
‘Investment from Dutch Sport Tech Fund helps us to grow further’

“Dutch Sport Tech Fund helps us to scale up further.” That’s what Martijn van Dijk, CEO and founder of Scorito, says. This app is the Dutch market leader in Fantasy Sports, in other words: creating sports pools for sporting events such as World Cups, European Championships, Formula 1, and the Tour de France. In this interview, Van Dijk talks about his future plans and how Dutch Sport Tech Fund is helping him to realize them.

You could say that Van Dijk laid the foundation for Scorito thirty years ago. In high school, he was already creating sports pools. “At that time, you couldn’t bet on individual matches in the Netherlands, and odds weren’t used yet. In England, this was possible, so I decided to offer it that way myself when I was in high school. It became a huge success: students, teachers, the whole school, and eventually several schools participated.”

“In 2010, I founded Scorito after selling my telecom company. This exit (company sale) gave me space to reflect and discover new ideas. I am a sports fanatic and very competitive, so I was always fascinated by creating sports pools. However, I was annoyed by the way other apps and sites worked. During the Tour de France, the 2010 World Cup, and the Eredivisie, I kept running into the same issues. You could tell that the pools were not the main focus of the providers. The user experience was not optimal, results were not displayed in real time (immediately), and background information was often missing. That could be done better and smarter. That’s when I decided to start Scorito. During the 2012 European Championship, we quickly had 72,000 participants. And that was just the beginning.”

“We have grown into a platform where you can start a sports game for all major sports together with your friends. This can be a traditional football pool, but we also have much more extensive manager games. Football, cycling, Formula 1, darts, and tennis are the most popular sports. For many people, Scorito has become a hobby. They hop from one sporting event to another. They start the year with the Australian Open, join the spring cycling classics, and participate in a European or World Football Championship in the summer. By now, we have 1.2 million users who have played at least once. During the last European Championship, 600,000 people participated in the pools. The majority of our users live in the Netherlands, where we are the market leader. We are also active in Belgium, Germany, Spain, and England. There are also users of our app from other countries.”

“We distinguish ourselves in several ways. First of all, we invest in the quality of our games. We do everything we can to make them exciting and interesting for our participants. This means we continue to develop games for years, invest in improving the level of play, and sometimes also say goodbye to games that are not good enough. Secondly, we have solved the frustration of our users. We have invested in the quality of the platform, which can handle massive peak loads. After a football match at the European Championship, about half a million users open our app within five seconds. There are few apps that have to deal with such a peak – and that can handle it. We also ensure that all results are loaded within a minute after a match, so it is immediately visible who is leading the game. That is what our users want and expect.”

“This foundation ensures that we have built a loyal group of fans who return every year. In fact, they start playing more games and invite more friends. After all, you play Scorito with your friends, that’s what makes it fun. As a result, we benefit from a network effect: friends invite friends. That organic growth is very valuable for our company. By binding the organizer of a sports pool to us, we are assured of the participation of their friends. Organizers of pools who bring friends are therefore rewarded with, for example, shirts or books.”

“We have three revenue models. First, we offer paid subscriptions. For many major sporting events like the World Cup or European Championship, people can play along for free, but those who want to participate in all games need to pay for it. In the past, Scorito was free for every user; the transition to a paid app was quite exciting, but it turned out to be successful.”

“Second, we have a business client base. These are companies that use Scorito as a team-building activity. During major sporting events, they purchase Scorito for the entire company. We offer the option to use their own company branding within the app. Third, we offer advertisements in our app. So, companies have the opportunity to advertise in Scorito. These ads enable us to offer Scorito for free during major sporting events, which helps us attract new users.”

“We want to add more value to the company by developing new revenue models and by growing both in the Netherlands and abroad. The platform is extremely scalable, so we need to seize those growth opportunities.”

“The investment from Dutch Sport Tech Fund will help us achieve our objectives. The fund has multiple investments in our sector, which enables cross-pollination between the other portfolio companies. We could also leverage the network of Dutch Sport Tech Fund. This makes Dutch Sport Tech Fund the ideal partner to help us grow.”

“They were a particularly attractive partner for us because they focus exclusively on sports technology companies. That makes it a logical match. We spoke with several parties, but Dutch Sport Tech Fund was the first to immediately understand our business model and see the potential of our app. That gave us confidence in a collaboration. We are also a logical match for Dutch Sport Tech Fund, because we can add value to the other portfolio companies. As we are the market leader in Fantasy Sports and have a broad network of fans of specific sports, we offer potential synergy benefits.”

“Nice of you to ask. I grew up playing football, but now I also enjoy cycling. Thanks to Scorito, I’ve become a huge cycling fan. Where I used to only watch the Tour de France, I now watch almost everything. That’s what Scorito does for its users: it creates bigger sports fans. By playing Scorito, you start following more sports content and broaden your sports knowledge. That’s the result of our app. Sports federations, competitions, clubs, and tournaments all benefit from our app, because thanks to us, people watch sports more often and for longer periods. And they also try new sports, just like I did with cycling.”