mygames
Founded in 2019, MyGames is a relatively young but fast-growing startup building booking and automation solutions for tennis and padel courts. The company’s rapid growth is partly happening because of the COVID-19 crisis. In late 2019, the startup launched their first application helping tennis players find substitute players with only one click because sometimes you simply can’t play at your regular time and you need someone to replace you.
At the beginning of 2020, MyGames joined Tehnopol Startup Incubator and closed 100K in the pre-seed round at the end of January. Just a bit later when COVID-19 locked down pretty much every single tennis court in Europe they started building the “tennis court in a box” as they call it – a hardware product coupled with the MyGames booking system which is the key for maintaining fully automatic tennis courts. Though the solution was built keeping tennis in mind, the product is fully applicable for both tennis and padel courts.
Already in July 2020, the very first self-service outdoor tennis court was opened in Pärnu, the summer capital of Estonia. With the MyGames demo court, the players could simply book, pay and play without any contact with employees because there are none. Court automation helps to avoid unnecessary human contact and reduces costs for court maintenance, marketing etc. The booking system controls everything from the reservation and payment to the access, lighting and even irrigation if needed.
They continued to automate several outdoor courts in Estonia during summer but they didn’t stop there. By the end of the year, they managed to automate the first all-year-round tennis hall. This was a similar solution to their demo court, except this time the whole building was maintained by the booking system. From the launch in July, MyGames has delivered more than 2000 bookings with a value of over €50K. Within the next 6 months, they are planning to onboard 100+ tennis and padel courts.
MyGames is an official partner of the Estonian Tennis Association (ETA) since 2020. Within one year they have been awarded by several organizations: “Regional Tennis Developer” by ETA, “Best Startup” by co-working space Forwardspace and “The product of the year” by Pärnu Development Centre & Pärnu Postimees. They closed another €100K through the Estonian Business Angels Network early in 2021 and are now making their way to the European market. MyGames is putting great emphasis on building a database of all tennis courts in Europe (10 000 courts in the list today) so keep an eye on their website if you love tennis. Soon you will find them all on one interactive map.
Margus Randmäe, co-founder and CEO of MyGames, commented: „Being passionate about tennis, we saw the potential to make tennis court management much more efficient and by doing so, we can bring tennis closer to players, especially to new enthusiasts.”
“MyGames is offering a complete booking solution (software and hardware) which helps the court owners to spend less and earn more while offering a first-class customer experience to the players. Our „Airbnb for tennis courts“ with the marketplace, booking and automation features will bring less effort, new players, more money and free time for court managers. And tennis is not alone. There is a rapidly growing community of padel players that could benefit from our solutions as well. MyGames will be the Nr.1 tool for racquet sports. There is a significant number of smaller tennis centres, public and private courts all over Europe that could be put in more use and we can help them do that while reducing their marketing and administrative costs at the same time,” said Randmäe.
Raigo Õunapuu, lead investor, adds on top of that: “Most of all I treasure MyGames team for its capability to work smart and achieve their goals fast which is crucial for a startup company.” He believes that the team has all the skills necessary to soon onboard first courts from outside of Estonia in order to prove their concept on the international market which is an important step for their next investment round.