The team of the ‘startup’ Clupik, which develops ‘software’ to integrate the management of sports clubs. /
B-Venture
The ‘startup’ Clupik brings digitalization to sport by providing clubs with a tool from which to control all aspects of day-to-day
The membership card of the neighborhood football team is not paid by bank transfer. Not even for Bizum. The money is left in the bar, the bakery or the kiosk so that it is given to the first member of the board who passes. And that is something that probably won’t change anymore, that goes in the idiosyncrasies of the member, the team and the neighborhood. But even in those small sports clubs, digitization has a lot to offer. After all, if you can run an industrial plant from a mobile, how can you not also do it with a preferred regional team?
Something very similar was asked in 2017 by Gonzalo García, Álvaro Acebes and David Herranz when they began to develop Clupik, a digital platform created to improve the management of semi-professional and amateur sports clubs. «The idea arises from the need. Two of the three founders of the ‘startup’ are directors of basketball teams and saw that technology could smooth communication between all levels and simplify many of their own tasks”, explains Beñat Bengoetxea, partner and head of marketing at the firm . When they verified that the same tool could be used by clubs of any sports speciality, from football to ‘bridge’, they thought about the facilities that it would offer to the little ones, who are sometimes managed by volunteers without specific training and with a dedication that is rare. can sometimes be full. “Not only would it help them start their digitization; it could even bring new sources of income », he stresses.
What Clupik offers them is, in short, the possibility of managing any matter of the team, its athletes or partners from a simple control panel or even from a mobile. «Each club customizes this tool according to its needs and has the power to decide what information those who download the ‘app’ can access based on their profile. A simple fan will only be able to see the news section and the results. One step higher, members will also access a payment gateway where they could pay for the card. The players or their families, in the case of a school sports competition, will also be able to check the training schedule; the technical team, the sports organization part and, finally, the members of the board, will be able to see everything. The system allows them to digitize management at their own pace, depending on the advantages they see or how accustomed they are to handling digital tools in other areas”, explains Bengoetxea.
Online payments
The ‘startup’ has created its payment parallel so that, for example, the membership card is paid in the app
To cover the entire field and facilitate the choice of the tasks that you want to digitize from the start or the access that you want to give, Clupik divides its control panel and its ‘app’ into five blocks. The first contains the administrative part and in it we can find from the federation file models that each athlete must fill out to the economic balance. A second block facilitates, through the web and the ‘app’, communication between all interest groups, whether internal or external, and can even generate income if advertisers are achieved for those spaces.
The third block is dedicated to sports management itself (training, player monitoring, injury evolution…), while the fourth gathers information on calls, tournaments or results. And the fifth gives access to the ‘online’ store, where you can buy everything from the kit to the Christmas lottery.
The price of the tool is between 35 and 100 euros, depending on the size of the club. The company invoiced 300,000 euros last year and this has closed a round of 740,000 euros. For the next one, it is preparing another one and a half million with which it hopes to establish itself in the national market, position its payment gateway and launch itself in the European market. To present it, it will attend B-Venture on October 18 and 19, the startup event organized by EL CORREO at the Palacio Euskalduna with the sponsorship of the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment of the Basque Government, the development agency SPRI, the Bizkaia Provincial Council and the Bilbao City Council. And the collaboration of BStartup from Banco Sabadell, BBK, Laboral Kutxa, CaixaBank, BBVA and the University of Deusto.
Clupik
Platform for the management of all the processes and management of semi-professional clubs and ‘amateurs’ of any sports modality.
Customized website for each club
Along with the management panel and the ‘app’, Clupik also provides clubs with their own web page that, based on predesigned templates, they can adapt to their tastes by choosing the colors, typography and sections they want to create. “For someone with a certain amount of digital skills, it’s a very easy process, but we also have a technical support team to ask questions or ask for help,” says Beñat Bengoetxea.
As with the ‘app’, its use is a matter for each team. “We have clubs that still do not want to digitize their processes, but they do find it interesting to have a website because it provides them with visibility, since it can be connected to social networks and above all because income can be generated through it. They can, for example, offer sponsors to place advertisements on it or use it to promote their services through the club’s online store », he explains.