Coachbetter -- a unified club soccer coaching and management platform -- has landed the German Football Association as a strategic investor, Buying Sandlot has learned. The partnership will also include a joint venture -- Digitales Vereinsheim, which translates to Digital Clubhouse.
CEO Patrick Patzig said the company was approached by DFB after wrapping up its Series A funding round; it then re-opened the round to complete the deal and give the federation equity.
"DFB built a platform in 2002 and brought it to about 5,000 clubs across Germany. But as you can imagine, this platform has been outdated,” he said. “They were looking for an innovative partner outside of the federation to really bring some more energy to the platform and work with best practices. They chose us out of like 40 companies they evaluated. And as part of this process, they felt they wanted to be close to this partner, we want to have aligned visions and a long-term relationship."
Patzig said the focus over the next two years is bringing Digitales Vereinsheim to the over 24K grassroots clubs across Germany. But the long-term vision is to expand into neighboring countries like Austria and Switzerland, as well as potentially go elsewhere in Europe and worldwide.
"You see a lot of administrative tools for membership payments, management, potentially communication, but the other part of a sports club is missing," Patzig said. "Day to days of a coach, day to days of a player, day to days of a parent. Session planning, match day preparation, player feedback. All of these things are now combined in one platform and very, very user-friendly. And accessible where it needs to be accessible.”
Patzig said the goal is to give clubs back more time to focus on their communities, rather than operations.
"Volunteers, especially in in Europe, they work eight, nine hours in the day job, then they drive in the evening to the club," he said. "They don't get paid for being part of this community and helping this community thrive. What DFB wants to achieve to make their life easier and take away or make these administrative processes more efficient."
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