SFL Football is free with in-app purchases. FootBot charges £10 entry and auto-scores. PitchPulse runs the player vote. The club-owned fan economy that nobody sells. Here's how it works.
SFL Football (sflfootball.app) is a free app with in-app purchases. It offers 100+ customisable graphic templates (fixtures, full time, starting lineup, player stats), a drag-and-drop lineup builder, and a fantasy league for your own club. It markets itself to "Sunday League, non-league, semi-pro, pro, and university."
The fantasy league is free. Players set it up themselves. They pick their teams. They track their scores. They talk about it in the group chat. It's popular. It's engaging. It's fun.
The club earns nothing from it.
FootBot (footbot.co.uk) is the sharpest signal this cycle. It charges £10 entry per player for a paid fantasy league. £10 x 30 members = £300. Auto-scored. The worked example is on their own website. The club earns from the entry fees.
But FootBot is a tool. It's a fantasy league platform. It's not a club product. The club doesn't own the league. The club doesn't control the data. The club doesn't earn recurring revenue from it.
PitchPulse (pitchpulse.vote) runs a player of the match vote. 3-2-1 scoring. Season leaderboard. It's free. It's engaging. Players love it. Parents love it. The club earns nothing from it.
The gap is the club-owned fan economy. The fantasy league, the player vote, the prediction game, the season leaderboard — owned by the club, controlled by the club, earning revenue for the club.
Every club has fans. Not Premier League fans. Not 50,000-seat stadium fans. Grassroots fans. Parents. Siblings. Grandparents. Former players. Local residents. People who care about the club.
Those fans already do things. They already check scores. They already ask "who scored?" They already argue about who was player of the match. They already run informal fantasy leagues in the group chat.
The club doesn't capture any of that. The energy exists. The engagement exists. The conversation exists. But the club doesn't own it, doesn't control it, and doesn't earn from it.
The club runs its own fantasy league. Not SFL's. Not FootBot's. The club's.
Players are entered into the league automatically (from the club's squad list). Parents and fans pick their teams. Points are awarded for goals, assists, clean sheets, appearances. A leaderboard is published weekly on the club's social media.
Entry is free. Or entry is £2 per month. Or entry is £10 per season. The club decides. The club sets the price. The club collects the money.
30 parents at £2/month = £60/month = £720/year. That's a new kit. That's new equipment. That's a contribution to the pitch fund.
The club runs its own player of the match vote. Not PitchPulse's. The club's.
After every match, the club posts a vote. Three candidates. Parents and fans vote. The winner is announced on social media. The winner gets a graphic. The winner gets a shoutout.
The vote drives engagement. Parents who vote are parents who are engaged. Engaged parents are parents who share posts. Shared posts reach more people. More people means more visibility for sponsors.
The club publishes a season leaderboard. Top scorers. Top assisters. Most appearances. Most clean sheets. Updated weekly. Posted to social media every Monday.
The leaderboard drives conversation. "Who's top scorer?" "Who's got the most assists?" "Is [child's name] going to win the golden boot?" Parents talk about it. Children talk about it. Grandparents ask about it.
The conversation is the engagement. The engagement is the value. The value is what sponsors pay for.
SFL Football is free. The fantasy league is a feature, not a product. The club doesn't own the data. The club doesn't control the league. The club doesn't earn from it.
FootBot charges £10 entry. But FootBot is a tool. The club pays for the tool. The club doesn't own the platform. The club doesn't own the data.
PitchPulse runs the vote. But PitchPulse is a tool. The club uses it. The club doesn't own it. The club doesn't control the data.
The gap is the club-owned fan economy. The fantasy league, the player vote, the prediction game, the season leaderboard — owned by the club, controlled by the club, earning revenue for the club.
Not a tool the club subscribes to. A product the club owns.
In 17 cycles of competitor sweeping, we've found 15+ entrants. Graphics. Captions. Auto-publishing. Sponsor tracking. Fantasy leagues. Whole-club OS platforms. Fan databases. Club-wide rollout tools. Written content generators. Chat platforms. Management apps. Fan-run documentary channels. Sponsor outcome reports.
SFL Football offers a free fantasy league. FootBot charges £10 entry. PitchPulse runs the vote. None of them are club-owned. None of them earn revenue for the club. None of them give the club control of the data.
The club-owned fan economy is the gap. The fantasy league the club owns. The player vote the club controls. The season leaderboard the club publishes. The revenue the club keeps.