Teamworks, a leading athlete engagement platform for collegiate and professional organizations, announced an investment in INFLCR, the premium social media content delivery platform in sports. Teamworks’ investment will create the infrastructure for INFLCR to continue its rapid growth in the athletics industry, from its Birmingham, AL headquarters.
INFLCR empowers athletes by providing valuable branding solutions to professional and collegiate athletes. Athletic organizations like Duke basketball and Miami football rely on INFLCR to help their athletes amplify both their personal brands as well as their teams’ to drive social engagement across digital platforms. Teamworks partners with more than 2,500 teams around the world to engage and empower their athletes. By connecting people and systems, simplifying logistics and streamlining operations, Teamworks powers athlete success on and off the field. Together, the companies are able to deliver SaaS solutions that are uniquely positioned to empower the world’s athletes and their teams to drive digital transformation across their organizations.
“We recognized INFLCR’s potential and the synergies between our brands: empowering athletes is at the core of both companies,” said Zach Maurides, CEO and founder of Teamworks. “We were in a position similar to INFLCR five years ago and understand the market potential. We’re investing not only in INFLCR, to realize and accelerate their potential growth, but also in athletes and the incredible impact they can have on society.”
As a platform to help athletes manage their off-the-field life, Teamworks has been a pioneer in sports SaaS, helping pave the way for newer companies like INFLCR to sell into collegiate and professional sports brands that have new and growing line items in their budget for SaaS products. The multidimensional investment unlocks INFLCR’s ability to bring its valuable solution to Teamworks’ extensive network. INFLCR has grown rapidly by helping student-athletes build sustainable brands on social media that they can leverage and monetize once they leave college.
More than 68 percent of a professional or college athletic team’s social media reach comes from non-owned social media accounts — most notably, the personal social media accounts of their athletes. Since the INFLCR app launched in 2018, year over year athlete social media accounts have seen a 52 percent increase in social media followers, and team social accounts have grown by 21 percent. That includes outliers like Kentucky Football’s 210 percent team social media account growth during their 2018 football season, and student-athletes like Josh Allen seeing more than 1000 percent growth during that same timeframe.
“Becoming part of the Teamworks family is a strong culture fit, as both companies were founded by former collegiate student-athletes who share a strong vision to serve and empower athletes,” said Jim Cavale, Founder and CEO of INFLCR. “The shared athlete-first DNA reinforces our mutual goal to deliver best-in-class technology solutions across the industry. We’ve enjoyed rapid growth since our inception, which will only be accelerated by the support and network Teamworks has to offer.”
Teamworks is based in Durham, NC and INFLCR is based in Birmingham. The two companies are pioneering sports SaaS on a worldwide scale from the U.S. southern region, as part of a growing number of technology companies that are being built in more economically friendly markets with efficiencies for employee cost of living and the overall cost of doing business.
