Social Sports Networks

In Toronto, the local sports scene is flourishing. Every night of the week (at least in the summer), the baseball, soccer and Ultimate fields are teeming with adults participating in all kinds of recreational leagues.

For many people, however, getting into these leagues can be some intimidating given are focused on team entries. If you’re an individual, registering can be a challenge. This is where places such as LoveofSports and I Love to Play come into play by offering recreational athletes a service that combines sports, social networking, matching making and news.

Love of Sports is an interesting start-up given its founder, Bob Doherty, was a senior executive with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. As well, it has a fairly high-profile investment group that includes John Bassett, Dennis Watson, Lucy Troisi, local entrepreneur Danny Tsakiris, a local entrepreneur, and General Sports and Entertainment.

The biggest challenge facing services such as LoveofSports is selling people on the idea of using them. As much as social networking and personal match-making are popular online activities, getting into a recreational sports league has remained off-line. This explains why Sports & Social clubs have flourished in many cities around North America. Then again, Facebook is demonstrating that people are willing to connect online so perhaps recreational sports is a market ripe with potential.

Source: Toronto Star.