#THIS ARTICLE IN DUTCH
by: Rutger Oosting | 8 February 2022
Wouldn’t you like to know which match will be playing in your city at any given time? Or you are on the road, and would like to attend a local match, but don’t know where and when. Enter the newly launched Sidelyne-app of Jochem Moll. His company’s mission is to bring fans and sports clubs together to make visiting local, small, sports events more accessible, efficient and popular. ‘We hope the app will make it easier to locate high-level amateur games in the Netherlands and put them on the map.’
Jochem Moll got the idea when visiting a friend in Switzerland, with whom he had gone to college in Los Angeles. That friend was travelling a lot, but had never found a suitable tool to find local games near where he was staying. ‘He is really into going and see amateur games. Local events that are usually hard to locate. If you travel to Australia it is easy to find the venues where major cricket matches are held. But if you are staying in the Basque Country, and would like to see a pelota game https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelota, a sport that originated and is hugely popular in that area. I live in Utrecht. On a Friday night I don’t want to cruise around all sports clubs to see which team is playing at home. ‘Does Kampong play? Oh, just missed it.’ You don’t go checking all the sites, Moll says.
‘For example, I found out that near me first-division ice hockey matches are played’, Moll continues. ‘And then there are lacrosse matches, a sport popular among students. Also there is water polo, American football, and so on. In many cities matches are played at a high level that you can just go and watch. Some sports are popular precisely in small towns, like handball or korfball.’
‘If you don’t know that high-level ice hockey is played within five km from where you are, you’ll never get to know the club’
It Works Both Ways
At this point the app focuses mostly on visitors looking for matches. But for clubs the app could be useful to attract more visitors or potential new members. ‘Clubs can generate more business by selling extra tickets, but also by selling more food and beverages, or even merchandise’, Moll explains. ‘If you don’t know that high-level ice hockey is played within five km from where you are, you will never get to know the club. Attending a game is the first step towards membership.’
Meanwhile the app is live in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam. The Hague is next. ‘At this point we are still in the pilot phase. Right now it is hard to test things as many amateur games have been cancelled because of Covid. We did a small-scale marketing in campaign in Utrecht, and immediately got a hundred downloads. That was a terrific start for us. It appears there is a need for this app.’
In the future the revenue model will be that tickets can be sold through the app, with part of the proceeds going to Sidelyne. The app can be downloaded for free. ‘We want to make money on a commission basis. If a club sells ticets through the app, we will get a small portion of the proceeds. This could be a very small percentage. In the future we would like to offer clubs the option to put their game in the spotlight for a couple of Euros.’
Future
In the years to come Moll hopes to further develop Sidelyne in the Netherlands. The ambition is to then roll out the project in Europe, and after that in the world, perhaps. But that is still a long way off, Moll says. ‘We are currently working on Germany and Belgium. Switzerland is easier, of course, because of my Swiss partner. But we are still looking for an investor who wants to join us…’, Moll concludes, with a wink.
For more information: www.sidelyne.app