MySportProfiler.com is a new international internet-based platform that is meant to put sports brands together with anyone who would like to work with them. A total of 51 companies in the sector including Nike, Puma, Reebok and Quiksilver have already agreed to cooperate in the new project, which should be running at full speed starting Jan. 1.
The beta version is already online in English, French and German and has been available for registration by prospective job applicants since last September. About 2,500 candidates have registered so far in spite of very little publicity around the new initiatives. Two-thirds are from France and Germany. The others are mostly from Italy and the Benelux countries, but there have been also about 200 registrations from North America.
Companies pay €1,000 to participate by placing their profiles on the website, adding €250 per job offer. Applicants pay nothing to register themselves and to consult the ads, but they have to outline their own individual profiles. Other services are offered at a modest charge of one euro per month.
MySportProfiler.com is described as the first European professional social network specializing in the sports sector. It uses the latest web technologies including geo-localization, podcasts, micro-blogging, instant messaging, etc.
Benoit Cossin, the 31-year-old manager who is running the new program out of France, says his goal is to obtain 200,000 registrations by the first half of 2010. The target is realistic, he says, considering that an estimated 2 million people are employed in the sports industry at large in Europe and that other social networks have many more registered people. More than 40 million people are registered with LinkedIn, and 135,000 with Facebook.
Cossin, who worked for the last eight years in the marketing departments of Nike and Rip Curl in France, is one of the shareholders in MySportProfiler.com along with Yannick Noah, the former French tennis champion, and three business angels from Accenture. Another minority shareholder is Sport Invest Group, the young and growing executive recruitment agency, which is placing its offices in Biarritz, Paris and Munich at the disposal of the new platform.
Based at Sport Invest’s German office, André Mayer, a 24-year-old who has worked for Porsche, Sony and Ericsson, is going to handle sales of MySportProfiler.com’s services all over Central Europe. The German section of Sport Invest has also hired an experienced executive, Jürgen Schütte, as senior consultant. While two of the managing partners, Florian Steinberger and Dietmar Damith, former executives of Chiemsee, continue to manage the sports business within the company, Schütte will be in charge of the bicycle industry. He belonged to the top management of K2 Europe and Mammut Sports Group and most recently served as managing director of Cannondale in Germany.
Sport Invest will also continue its cooperation with ISPO. Together with Messe München, it will organize a so-called Career Day at the next ISPO Winter show. Designed to inform young people about employment opportunities in the sports business, this project is supported by big players such as Intersport, VF, Nike, Billabong, Kettler, Horizon, Quiksilver, Polar, Sympatex and SportScheck.
