Playtomic, the racquet-sport app, has raised about €5.1 million from about 4,600 individual investors – fruit of a campaign that ran for a fortnight last November on Crowdcube, Europe’s largest crowdfunding website.
According to the International Padel Cluster (CIP), the new capital will go towards technical matters in the app, improvements in operating structure, international expansion and the embrace of new sports, like pickleball.
“The campaign goes to show that the community is the authentic pillar of Playtomic,” the CIP quotes company founder and CEO Félix Ruiz as saying. “That thousands of people decided to invest reflects extraordinary confidence and encourages us to keep developing the platform with them.”
Playtomic operates in 66 countries and boasts about 4.7 million players. Established in 2017, the company has expanded its business from court reservations into tournament planning, social networking for players, and club management. Its platform has exceeded €346 million in funds managed and generated €29 million in net income, according to the CIP.
In the scheme of things
Playtomic’s campaign appears to set a record for the crowdfunding of sports apps. In fact, it might represent a step up in order of magnitude. The next biggest case we can find is that of fantasy-cycling app FantaCycling (Pontedera, Italy), which in 2024 raised €166,850 from 192 individual investors.
There has been far more action in venture capital, but there too Playtomic seems to be in a league of its own. The company secured $63 million in 2021 from GP Bullhound and others and another $70 million last year from Match Invest (JV between Playtomic CEO Ruiz and Luxembourg Finance House), Banco Santander and others. Raphael Nadal invested in 2024.
To find another deal on this scale in the digital realm of the sporting-goods industry you must look to the outskirts – and to AI.
Last year, for instance, $24 million went to MomentsLab, which uses AI to organize video libraries for, among other things, sports teams. Another $15 million went to Cred (San Francisco), which uses AI to supply “predictive intelligence” to such clients as Ligue 1, the Bundesliga and Formula 1.
Closer to Playtomic’s turf is SportAI, which this past November raised $3 million from Altitude Capital, Norwegian tennis pro Casper Ruud and others. This company uses AI to “deliver professional-level performance insights through video analysis.”
