A University graduate is taking on some of the world’s biggest ticketing platforms after turning a coursework assignment into an award-winning sports technology business.
Andrej Nagy came up with the idea for Upfan during his undergraduate Sports Business Management course at the University of Worcester, when an assignment called for him to propose a business. His lecturer insisted his idea had potential, and he is now travelling the world growing the platform.
“We’re an all-in-one platform for sports teams, sports organisations and event organisers,” explained Andrej. “Upfan combines secure ticketing, data analytics, customer relationship management, fan engagement, gamification and marketing all into a single system.”
He said Upfan is challenging the existing ticketing market: “We use special encrypted QR codes that refresh every 30 seconds, so tickets can’t be resold outside our ecosystem. It helps prevent fraud and ticket touting.”
Rather than targeting elite clubs with large commercial departments, Andrej said Upfan is designed for the thousands of small and medium-sized sports organisations that lack the resources to develop their own ticketing and analytics systems.
Most of the platform’s users are clubs that sit between grassroots sport and the professional elite, where budgets and staffing can be limited.
“So many teams have maybe three or four full-time people doing everything,” he said. “They’re extremely busy, and so Upfan helps them use the data they already collect through ticketing to understand who their fans are, and how they can improve their relationships with them. The aim is that we help clubs use the information they have to bring more revenue and supporters into their stadiums.”
Andrej, who also studied for a Master’s in International Sports Management at the University of Worcester, said the assignment gave him the confidence to develop the idea into a business.
“We had a module on sports entrepreneurship,” he said. “One of our assignments was to create a business plan for a sports business, and that was the first version of Upfan. My lecturer really liked it and said I should build this into a business, so I started applying for start-up accelerators, attending business training programmes, and learning what it actually takes to build a company.”
He said lessons he learned at Worcester have been valuable to him in his journey. “As an international student, coming from Slovakia, the University broadened my horizons. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me prepare for the challenges of building a start-up company.”
“There were parts of the course that come up in my daily life now, from marketing to fundraising and investment,” added Andrej.
The company, which Andrej cofounded with friend and former Worcester student, Janka Chovancová, has grown rapidly since its launch and now works with sports organisations across Europe and the United States.
Andrej said: “At the moment we work with sports organisations in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the UK and we recently delivered our first event in the US, a tennis tournament in San Diego.”
He has also been accumulating awards, including a Disruptor Award for most innovative ticketing platform at the Ticketing Business Forum in Manchester, beating a number of more established providers, and the BOSS competition, a Dragon’s Den style competition for funding at the University of Worcester.
“One accelerator programme we did took us to Silicon Valley and Georgia State University in Atlanta. Another competition took us to New York for a start-up bootcamp. Those experiences were absolutely amazing, and they give us a huge amount of motivation and confidence to keep pushing Upfan forward,” said Andrej.
Now, Andrej is traveling Europe, meeting potential customers and investors, sharing the Upfan story, and exploring how artificial intelligence can help sports organisations better understand and communicate with their supporters.
“The goal is to make everything quicker and easier, so clubs can focus on what they do best on the pitch,” he said.
Looking back on his journey from a classroom assignment to an international sports technology business, Andrej credits his time at the University of Worcester with giving him both the space to devise Upfan and the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship.
“I really enjoy what I’m doing, especially because it’s so diverse. I’m learning new things every single day, and that’s what keeps driving me to take Upfan to the next level.”
Read more about Upfan on the official website.
For information on courses at University of Worcester visit www.worcester.ac.uk or for application enquiries telephone 01905 855111 or email admissions@worc.ac.uk