Utrecht-based Mingle Sport raises €1.25 million to scale grassroots football app globally | EU-Startups

Dutch sportstech startup Mingle Sport has raised €1.25 million in a seed round led by experienced angel investors and Dutch multinational Rabobank. The round will allow the grassroots football app to scale its operations on a global level and launch its premium AI product for coaches and players.

The app was launched as a public beta in the Netherlands in summer 2022, and used by thousands of teams over the course of the season. Following the success of the initial launch, the Dutch startup has now opened up its app to a global audience and is available to use in Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand.

“We’re very excited to open our app to the international grassroots football community,” said Freek Bijl, co-founder of Mingle Sport. “We’ve seen a huge need from teams in pro-level stats and content, with low barriers to entry in terms of setup and cost. Our goal is to provide a solution with our app, and help the enormously underserved community of grassroots athletes out there.”

After using the public beta launch to extensively test user behaviour and features, Mingle Sport will introduce premium AI-powered features for grassroots football teams by 2024. The features are said to offer unique stats & content for teams, as well as additional benchmarking and automatic video highlights.

Ruben van Brunschot, advisor at Rabobank, commented: “At Rabobank we were impressed by Mingle Sport and their innovative solutions. But most of all we believe this is a great way to make sports tech more accessible for everyone”.

Founded in 2021, the Mingle Sport app allows football teams to track their performance, share interesting highlights and manage their team. Currently, the app is free to use and does not have any ads. 

The founders want to create a business model that serves the grassroots football community: “We want teams and clubs to really own their content and data. So they can create value from it. We’re doing some very interesting experiments with clubs around various pricing mechanisms and will start to introduce premium products in 2024.”