Online Sports and Leisure Community
Richard began life as a serial entrepreneur launching an online Sports and Leisure Community in 2003. Majorsporty.com was a pioneering community of interest like a ‘Facebook for Sport ‘where people could share their love of sport, buy kit and book activities. It was an early social enterprise that channeled funds into grass roots sports through a commission scheme for charities and sports clubs. By 2008 it had created over 5,000 items of content, 10,000 members and over 120 brands with 15,000 products in our online store and received over 700,000 unique visitors in just 6 months.
Despite solid growth and helping provide funds for athletes, sports clubs and charities majorsporty.com came to an end in 2008 when a bank withdrew a loan. It had achieved so much with no grants, or support from third parties taking an amazing idea from concept to reality. Between the team they had lost over £100,000 of their money (friends, family and fools) but looking at Facebook and other social media platorms now they were on the right track and so nearly made it.
majorsporty the online sports and leisure community consisted of 3 main components:
Interactive community to share your love of sport
Online sporting store with club commission scheme
Activity directory with online booking
Majorsporty had a series of animated characters who also delivered messages around physical activity and sport encouraging people to get active
Some of our achievements included:
Raising significant funds for charity and sports clubs through our comission scheme
Building a supply chain over of 120 brands and 15,000 products which were retailed nationally
Developing a brand awareness around our grass roots sports logo and animated characters
Achieving significant traction with over 700,000 unique visitors in 6 months and over 10,000 members
Helping support and raise awareness for SportsAid and their work as a charity
Helping support many emerging talent athletes with kit sponsorship, media promotion and funding many of whom became Olympians and World Champions
Taking the seed of an idea from a concept to fully functioning national business
Onwards