2024 Record of Achievement + Q1 2025 Roadmap
On August 1, 2024, Tournated Alpha officially went live, marking a significant milestone in our journey. Partnering with a select group of sports organizations, we began testing and refining our platform. By the end of August, we had successfully stabilized the system and initiated our initial marketing efforts, leveraging our strong network to build momentum. We conducted our first live test with an “outside-the-inner-circle” sports organization - the Polish Pickleball Association - during the first week of September. Our team traveled to Pszczyna, for the event to see the platform in action, gather feedback, create content, and more. Since then, significant work has been done on both the development side and business side (although we can’t say we’ve started proper marketing and sales activities just yet). But here we are, first week of January, 2025 - official software of national-level sports organizations in 10+ countries, generally operating in 20+ countries (Europe, Asia, America), supporting 9 sports, and working with 2 franchises.
Official software of the Pickleball World Rankings, Latvian Tennis Federation, Lithuanian Tennis Federation, Georgian Tennis Federation, Japan Pickleball Association, Polish Pickleball Association, Czech Republic Pickleball Association, Puerto Rico Beach Tennis Association, Latvian Chess Federation, Maxwill Sports and many others.
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Nothing would have been possible without our team, so first and foremost, a huge thanks to the amazing Tournated family who dedicate most of their time to the project (often forgetting about weekends). Being a fast-growing startup is both exciting and exhausting, but there’s nothing better than seeing something you’ve been building for years now being actively used and appreciated!
Since the launch of our multi-sport "white-label as a service" solution, we have been actively exploring market opportunities. Our platform is designed to cater to almost any sport, so we tested various sports and strategies to identify our niche.
As Tournated's Founder and CEO, Nikita Ribakovs - a "rackets guru" and national champion in seven sports - naturally led our initial focus toward racket sports. However, in the early months, Tournated powered events across a diverse range of sports, including tennis, padel, beach tennis, pickleball, chess, sport fishing, and basketball 3x3. We also engaged with organizations representing over 10 other sports.
In October 2024, we made the strategic decision to prioritize pickleball as our top sport, recognizing its significant market potential. We remained focused on tennis and other racket sports while simultaneously preparing a tailored solution for chess (with its large player base and event volume we believe Tournated can drive significant innovation).
The technical roadmap for 2024 faced significant challenges, and we acknowledge the pressure this placed on our tech team. Our approach was driven by an "on-demand" tactic - prioritizing feature development requested by qualified prospects. This strategy involved signing Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) and delivering features within tight deadlines. While this approach helped us secure solid deals and improve traction - making us more appealing to larger partners and investors - we recognize the need to streamline our processes moving forward. Now is the time to focus on establishing a more structured and sustainable framework for future development.
Since May 2024, Tournated has been primarily self-funded by its founders. In September, we initiated efforts to raise a funding round within Baltic (local) VCs but faced rejections, mainly due to a lack of understanding of the market's potential and insufficient traction at the time. As a result, we decided to postpone the round and focus on product development and building traction.
In just a few months, this decision paid off significantly. We achieved a 7x increase in our customer base, established Tournated as a leading sports management tool in Pickleball across Europe and Asia, onboarded our first international organization, transitioned national tennis federations from their previous solutions to ours, and secured our first national-level deal in chess. These achievements not only validated our platform but also generated increased investor interest.
With this traction, our perspective on fundraising has evolved. We have decided to open a limited bridge/strategic round to secure funding that will enable us to scale further, enhance our traction, and prepare for a more significant funding round.
For more information about the Fundraising Bridge Round, please reach out via email at nick@vertexo.net.
The upcoming months will prioritize improving user experience (UX), integrating local payment processing systems such as RazorPay (India) and WePay (China), finalizing monetization tools, and automating onboarding processes.
User Experience (UX) Enhancements
We’re preparing a significant update to the client-side platform (https://play.tournated.com). The migration to Next.js will deliver not only cleaner, optimized, and SEO-friendly code but also substantial technical and user-facing improvements, including:
Tournated Dashboard and Manager Enhancements
A redesigned structure to make workflows more intuitive, especially during onboarding.
Launch of Tournated Analytics, which will provide:
Updated dashboards are scheduled for release in the second half of January, with the Next.js open beta launching in early February.
This roadmap reflects our commitment to delivering a seamless and innovative platform experience while addressing the specific needs of our users across diverse sports domains.
Our focus remains on Pickleball, with the team participating in the Pickleballminds Conference in Dubai (January 15-17) and the Skechers PWR Masters 700 in Japan at the end of February. Simultaneously, we continue to strengthen our presence in Tennis, with four national federations already using Tournated as their official software.
In the coming months, we plan to expand into Padel and Chess, allocating resources to support growth in these sports. While our primary strategy targets high-level organizations such as international and national federations (we’ve already scheduled meetings with multiple new international federations and over 10 national federations in January), Tournated is open to all. Any sports organization can onboard for free via play.tournated.com and start using our services immediately.
In addition to our ongoing growth in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean, we are preparing to enter the U.S. market - a significant milestone in our global strategy.
To support our expansion, we are investing in our internal team. We’ve already begun hiring, starting with a new Front-End Developer, and will soon open positions for a Back-End Developer and a Marketing Manager.
Q1 will be dedicated to finalizing processes around UX and monetization, laying the groundwork for a full focus on revenue generation through marketing and sales in Q2. Our goal is to exceed all metric expectations by Q3 and prepare for a significant fundraising round at the end of 2025 or early 2026.
We’re excited for the opportunities that 2025 holds and look forward to reaching new milestones as we continue to grow!
Nikita Ribakovs
Author
01/03/2025 12:13 AM UTC