Sqor, an editorial and social media platform dedicated to sports, recently embraced crowdfunding as an option for athletes to fund things like training, travel expenses, competitions, and various philanthropic projects.
The feature was announced last month and former NFL player Brett Favre has already used the platform to raise almost $12k for his charity, The Favre 4 Hope Foundation, which helps breast cancer survivors. Favre’s support for the website’s new crowdfunding tool was noted in a Digital Journal article:
“This is a great opportunity for athletes to take their passion projects to the next level and raise money for good causes. The team at Sqor, Inc. got me set up quickly and easily, and I’m looking forward to a successful campaign raising money for the Favre4Hope foundation.”
While other crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe and Indiegogo open up their service to these kinds of personal projects, Sqor is hoping to offer a community and services that are specifically tailored to the sporting industry. A blog post on Sqor’s website announcing the crowdfunding service said:
“Whether an athlete is a young Olympic hopeful or a well-known professional all-star, Crowdfunding on Sqor provides a turn-key, social tool for fundraising, that enables an athlete’s fans to play apart in the athlete’s success.”
Unfortunately Favre is one of the only athletes to see much success using the platform so far, with others raising much less. Some of these examples include Calais Cambell of the NFL who has raised $15 for his CRC Foundation which empowers young people and Darrin Wells of the NFL who has raised $160 for Bright Pink, a breast cancer charity.
Another potential deterrent for athletes wanting to use the site’s crowdfunding service was mentioned in a re/code post:
“The company may also run into issues if NCAA athletes start using the platform. The NCAA has a number of rules about players accepting cash, either before or during their collegiate careers; doing so can harm that athlete’s status as an ‘amateur,’ which the NCAA requires.”
If the platform is successful these things may be more clearly regulated later on.
With Caterham’s recent campaign on Crowdcube it seems as though crowdfunding is increasingly being seen as a more sustainable method of funding for some athletes and teams. Other crowdfunding platforms exist that are for sports teams and athletes like RallyMe, or have sports categories, such as Sponsume. A Forbes article showed that CEO Noah Gift is not trying to compete with larger crowdfunding platforms, but sees crowdfunding as an extension their pre-existing service:
“If you look at something like Kickstarter, they handle the concept of crowdfunding. Twitter handles short messages to people. We are a premium product for athletes that focuses on monetization opportunities … As one of those opportunities, we have crowdfunding. For the athletes that don’t have large socialgraphs, we are creating opportunities through crowdfunding.”
One thing that is for sure is that sports fans are passionate – although sports crowdfunding doesn’t seem to have boomed yet maybe the increase in platforms and categories dedicated to it and more popular players creating projects will encourage more fans to adopt the practice.
