Spoferan – web app keeps athletes in the loop

Passau graduates Christian Teringl and Ferdinand Frank came up with an idea to make many things easier for athletes, associations and companies: they wanted to pool sport events on a single online platform – including registrations and training plans.

Examples include the Passau Domlauf run (see picture), the triathlon in Pfarrkirchen, and the Dreiburgenland Marathon in Thurmansbang. Triathlete Christian Teringl competes in numerous events every year. When is the next event? When do registrations open? What is the entry fee? This is all information that he has previously had to hunt down from a variety of websites.

EXIST Business Start-Up Grant for their idea

And so their vision was born: a web app to keep amateur athletes in the loop about events like these, and even generate individual training plans via the platform. Passau graduates Christian Teringl and Ferdinand Frank were awarded an EXIST Business Start-Up Grant for this idea. They plan to develop an online platform within a year.

As well as making life easier for amateur athletes, this web app will also offer benefits for:

Associations: The platform provides comprehensive “digital organisational assistance”. “I am a member of the board for the Bavarian Triathlete Association”, Teringl explains. “I know how difficult it is to look after a website as a volunteer alongside your job.”

Companies: These will be spared time-consuming searches for suitable advertising media and a wealth of telephone calls, as amateur athletes registered on the platform can be allocated to defined target groups. Companies and sponsors can then be paired up with suitable advertising media in a targeted manner.

Computer scientist Ferdinand Frank is responsible for implementing the technical elements whilst economist Christian Teringl is looking after marketing and the business model. The platform will be made available to athletes and associations free of charge to get as many people as possible interested in what it has to offer. This is down to the guiding principle of networking: the more associations and amateur athletes are actively integrated into the platform, the more attractive it will become to companies.

Participants and funding

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has provided the Passau graduates with funding via an EXIST Business Start-Up Grant. Their mentor is Professor Franz Lehner, holder of the Chair of Information Systems (Information and IT Service Management). Professor Jan Hendrik Schumann, holder of the Chair of Marketing and Innovation, is also involved in the project.

Principal Investigator(s) at the University	Prof. Dr. Franz Lehner (Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik II), Christian Teringl (Universität Passau), Ferdinand Frank (Universität Passau), Lisa Heller (Universität Passau)
Project period	01.12.2017 - 30.11.2018
Website	http://blog.spoferan.com/
Source of funding	BMWK - Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz > BMWi - EXIST