Tonsser United – the digital football club aiming to have the most player members in the world

They managed a draw against PSG and saw narrow defeats to both Juventus and Lyon.

Tonsser United are indeed one of the new kids on the block in the football industry when you compare them to clubs like Liverpool, Barcelona and Bayern Munich - all clubs with a long and very proud tradition in relation to transforming young talents into football superstars.

Actually, it shouldn’t really be possible for Tonsser, the football community and app founded in 2013, to compete with some of the world’s biggest clubs when you consider the tens of millions of euros the clubs spend each year on recruitment and running their academies all over the world.

But that is the story of Tonsser, and probably of most start-ups: Few would say there is a gap in the market, but scepticism is often beaten by innovation and technology.

Peter Holm, co-founder of Tonsser and CEO, is convinced that Tonsser have an important tole to play in the future landscape of football.

“In the beginning we wanted to create an app that would encourage children to play even more football, to get better and to share their tricks and skills with their friends. What we found out was that many of these players had a dream of becoming professional players. So we started our own team, Tonsser United, to create opportunities for unsigned youth players who are not part of an academy”.

Fulfil their dreams

Tonsser is an app, with almost 1.3 million users all over the world, which could be described as a bit like LinkedIn, though the target group is very, very different. No ambitious grown ups in suits and ties, but young football players having their own profile as a football player on the App.

There they can get votes by their team-mates after matches, and on the app they can - among many things - watch videos by children like themselves from all over the world sharing tricks, goals and highlights from matches.

But in 2018, Tonsser decided they also wanted to help their members fulfil their dreams of becoming professional footballers.

“It’s fair to say that clubs were reluctant to talk to us when we decided that we wanted to bridge our users with the professional academies around Europe. We were confident that in the Tonsser app there were quite a few talented players who could make it at the highest level, but clubs didn’t really buy into that.

"They felt that they had a strong legacy, and that they knew how to pick out the most promising talents. So it was a tough start – but today things have changed,” says Holm.

The company has been backed financially by both venture funds and private investors, such as Alejandro Bedoya from Philadelphia Union, David Bellion the ex-Manchester United-player, Andreas Laudrup, a former Danish professional, Claudio Chiellini former Juventus and Arthur Kosten, one of the co-founders of booking.com.

Who were never picked

In total Tonsser have received €11,6 million in funding and they are currently in the middle of a funding process that should add a further capital to the company founded in Denmark 8 years ago.

“We want to empower every player to unlock their potential,” is a sentence you will find on Tonsser’s website, and that is exactly what they started doing three years ago when they created Tonsser United, a team of young players who had a Tonsser account, wanting to give these players the opportunity to play against some of the biggest talents in the world.

Even though most clubs were sceptical about facing a team of “underdogs”, consisting solely of players who were never picked by the scouts from the professional clubs, clubs like Juventus, PSG, Lyon and Fulham then decided to play some of their best talents against Tonsser United.

“Those matches brought us a long way, and we – and the players – saw that we could actually compete. But to be frank, the real breakthrough came when Covid-19 locked down most of the world. Suddenly our app was a great tool for scouts to watch young talents play because they couldn’t go and watch live football,” Holm explains.

Show how good they are

He stresses that he doesn’t want to criticise the way clubs recruit and the way academies are being run, but says he is just convinced there will always be proper talent that doesn’t fit into the current academy and scouting structure, so Tonsser has a role to play in giving these underrated players and late-bloomers a chance to show what they can do.

“So far, we have arranged some matches, but in the future we want to do a lot more. Tonsser United should be much bigger in the sense that we should play many more matches against teams all over Europe, allowing our members to show how good they are.

"We have already seen some of our players sign for Brentford, Hellas Verona, Ingolstadt, Esbjerg and Gent, and we believe many more will follow in the future.”

Holm doesn’t want to be to specific in setting out their goals in terms of the number of matches they should arrange, the number of Tonsser players that should be offered a professional contract and the number of players that should break through at senior level.

That is what we do every day

For him, the goal is to be the number one club globally in terms of members and if they can achieve that, then he is convinced that the results will follow.

So far 65 per cent of the players who played a match for Tonsser United have either been on a trial or offered a professional contract.

“We have another very important role to play which is making sure that kids and youngsters actually love to play football. The development is alarming when you see how many kids are not playing football today. So that is also part of our vision that we should create events where our members can improve their skills and get some valuable coaching from inspiring people.

"Not all our members will be offered a professional contract which is okay – but we want to do everything we can to make them love the game of football, and that takes some initiatives that other clubs don’t necessarily facilitate.”

According to Holm, Tonsser is born digital so they are used to developing technological solutions for players in order for them to continue playing football.

“That is what we do every day. That is what we have been doing for 8 years. Building a cool app that young players love to use. So it doesn’t take a lot of convincing for us to walk the digital road because that is the only thing we do.”

Revenue-wise, Tonsser is making money from the members of its app, where parents pay for their children to have an account, clubs also pay to get access to the video material on the app, and they work with brands like Nike and Adidas to create projects for youth players, including Tonsser United.

“I understand that some people in the industry can be sceptical towards us and our vision. But if you look at Paris as an example there are tens-of-thousands of very good young footballers, but only a few professional clubs in the area. So there is not the right balance between the offering and the demand if you look at it from an industry perspective.

"And this is where we can play a role – and we have already seen one of our young players, Samy Mahour, sign a professional contract with Gent in Belgium. We arranged that trial for him and many others, and he was picked. So that is what we do – and we have just started.”