Bluefields.com, a sort of ‘Groupspaces for amateur football’, has scored £100k from seven angel investors including Julian Ranger of iBundle and Jalin Somaiya, Google Sales Project Leader, although Somaiya’s involvement isn’t associated with Google. Both will join Bluefields’ board.
The other five angels are Lee Strafford, co-founder of Plus.Net and ex-Chairman of Sheffield Wednesday FC, along with Mark Wainwright, Brian Lawrence, Jim Mann and Ami Shipro. The funding will be used to launch Bluefields’ football focused player availability and payment applications this August in time for the start of the football season in the UK. The platform is both browser-based and will have mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
Bluefields, which along with Groupspaces competes with the likes of Pitchero and Teamer, aims to help amateur football managers better organise games through a mix of social networking and mobile, in particular solving the two biggest bug bears: player availability and the collection of money. It does this by offering fixture and payment notifications sent via email, SMS, Facebook and through the Android and iPhone apps, while player responses are aggregated for the manager to help streamline the organisation of matches.
Collecting subs and other costs is also made much easier through the ability to take payments online and, perhaps crucially, also lets players pay via those mobile apps.