14 Jun Belfast tech company secures £500k funding for NI sport booking site
Congratulations to pitchbooking.com and their management team of Shea O’Hagan, Fearghal Campbell and Chris McCann on recently securing a £500k investment round to help boost its online sports booking service.
A Belfast tech company has secured £500,000 in funding to boost its online sports booking service.
Pitchbooking, a 2018 start-up run by friends Shea O’Hagan, Fearghal Campbell and Chris McCann, is a platform that enables instant, online booking of sports facilities.
It allows users to book everything from soccer pitches to sites for over 25 different sports.
Mr O’Hagan said: “We’ve already got a lot of partners across the UK, but we want to grow the team to expand further.”
He said new jobs will be created at the business, doubling the team over the first year post-investment.
“We need to hire more salespeople, additional developers and expand our customer success team,” said Mr O’Hagan.
The new funding will support that growth.
Mr Campbell said: “Our aim was to let members of the public search, book and pay for facilities — football, tennis, rugby, cricket — in under 60 seconds.”
The company has 15 council customers and works with hundreds of independent venues.
The company also runs programs for the Irish Football Association through a partnership with the IFA and their event sponsors.
Although the public is Pitchbooking’s end user, its main customers are sports facility managers who sign up on a subscription basis.
“Our customers range from the very big, 400+ facilities, to the very small, single community facilities that need a better way to operate their booking processes.” Mr McCann said.
“We have two great products now; facility and event booking software. The idea is to use this funding to accelerate growth of these products and get them into the hands of more people.”
In addition to online booking, users can also access an analytics dashboard that allows them to see data on bookings, cancel and refund customers and set custom pricing and availability.
The investment was made by Vertex Albion Capital, a Silicon Valley-based firm and backed by Aurient Investment Ltd, Co-Fund NI, Marco’s Leisure and World of Football and pro footballer Taylor Moore.