Technology Profile

Playeasy helps event organizers, sports venues & destinations connect through one seamless digital platform. In what City are you based and how did you come up with the idea?

We’re based in Boston, and are founded by three former Boston College Athletes, Sean Flaherty (Football – Long Snapper), Ryan Quigley (Football – Punter), Kerri Shields (Basketball – Guard). We all ran camps and clinics after college and really struggled finding venues and thought there needed to be a more efficient search and communication platform for sporting events. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Sean and Ryan were running a kicking, punting, and snapping camp that got double booked at a venue and they had to move forward with the camp in a parking lot.

In a short period of time, Playeasy’s exposure has skyrocketed. What activities, outreach, and business development efforts led to this?

While it might seem like we’ve had success overnight, it’s been three solid years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears. We have not focused on making aggressive marketing or sales campaigns, but instead the biggest thing we have focused on, and continue to focus on, is making a great product that people want to tell their friends about. There is no better marketing then word-of-mouth from people excited about your product and company. This word-of-mouth method has led to many of our first users, as well as helped secure our partnership with Sports ETA, which has helped immensely with gaining exposure in the marketplace.

PUSH Magazine launched two months prior to the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Playeasy has a similar story to tell. How have you been able to manage the company’s growth through this challenging pandemic?

Pre COVID, we were focusing on facility rentals and management, and our business model was solely based around transaction fees from facility rentals. We put a lot of investment into building the product, and we launched our new payment model the week that COVID hit, and it looked like a certain death sentence for our business. We had to become extremely lean and unfortunately let go of some good people, but the light at the end of the tunnel for us was that we could use this opportunity to reshape our product and pivot to sports tourism, which was an industry that the Indiana Sports Corporation taught us about that previous summer. During the pandemic, we solely focused on rebuilding our product for sports tourism and worked with TEAM Indiana, as well as some of our early partners, such as TEAM Maryland and Play Treasure Coast, to help create a solution that would provide value for the industry. Some early traction gave our investors the confidence to stick with us, as well as some PPP funding that kept us going.

You have recently created a strategic partnership with Sports ETA. Provide us some insights as to how that partnership will better serve the sports event and tourism industry.

This was a major milestone for us and something that we honestly believe will be a great thing for the sports tourism industry. We first met in 2019 when we were focused only on facility rentals, and as we made our pivot and started working with destinations in 2020, our conversations started picking up around how we could work together. The essence of our partnership is we are a software company, and Sports ETA are the industry experts. We are working together with them to make sure what we are building is a good fit, as well as all of the additional features and functionality that we can build to help provide more efficiencies and involve more industry stakeholders to take part in the platform. If you know Al Kidd, you know he has a lot of ideas, so over the next few months and years you will be seeing many new features, functionality, and integrations with software providers in the industry being announced and rolled out.

How does the platform benefit each of your current clientele (event organizers, facilities, and destinations)?

Basically, what we’re building is a members only social network for the Sporting Event & Tourism industry that lets: Event Organizers search, find, communicate, and post Requests for Proposals to the network of destinations and facilities to streamline their ability to schedule their events. Instead of having to put your headphones in and cold call for hours a day to find venues for your events, you can find a destination or venue on Playeasy, send a message, or post an RFP that match makes you with the right venues in seconds.

Destinations market their venues and find event organizers and RFP’s that are a good fit for them, as well as communicate through the platform either by sending a direct message, or posting an announcement to the entire network of event organizers. Another great benefit is that website development is long and expensive, and every destination wants the ability to have a great looking venue marketplace on their site. You can create a Playeasy profile with your venue marketplace in minutes with no coding, and you can embed that into your website saving a ton of time and money. So basically, Playeasy is a website developer, advertising platform and a 24/7/365 tradeshow that’s on one platform for a small fraction of the cost. Facilities can market their spaces and venue, find event organizers and Requests for Proposals that are a good fit for them, as well as communicate directly through the platform. We will also be adding the ability for them to advertise their availability to event organizers to help them fill their open space and win more business for their venue and destination.

With the power of the platform, the future is clear in that Playeasy can serve as the clearinghouse for all event bid opportunities within our industry. Is this where you see your company going and do you have a timeline for accomplishing such a feat?

Being the clearinghouse for sporting event bid opportunities is definitely part of where we see the platform going. To say all events is probably bold, as there are always cases in any industry that cannot be accomplished through technology, but we certainly would like to have most events for bid on our platform towards the end of this year to early next year. We also see the platform extending to allow destinations to be the ones that can go on offense, and not only rely on receiving RFP’s, but allow them to be the ones that can post availability and announcements to the community of event organizers on our system. We also plan on allowing vendors and industry providers to be able to connect with events that need their services, as well as allow destinations to bring in their partners, sponsors, and local business communities onto the platform to help increase their exposure and engagement around sporting events coming to their area.

Not only have you collaborated with Sports ETA, but you have been working on several other synergies. Can you tell us about them?

We have another partnership that is in the process of being announced with Threshold 360 to help provide 360-degree video tours of venues directly on the Playeasy profiles, as well as have been in conversations with several hotel service providers like Site Search, EventConnect and Hotel Planners, as well as facility management software companies, participant registration companies, CRM companies, media companies, and others. One thing we’ve learned quickly is that there’s a lot of companies and services that we can partner and integrate with, but we have to first focus on being great at what we do, and the rest will naturally take care of itself.

The Playeasy Founders have had close ties for years. How do your strengths and weaknesses play off one another for success?

We are close friends, and we are all former athletes who hate to lose – there is no doubt that our competitive spirit and time playing team sports is why we have been able to get through the hard times together without giving up.

Sean, our CEO, loves strategy and coming up with ideas for our product and sales, but he can be a lot to handle sometimes – he is intense and has a lot of ideas and thinks all of them are great.

Kerri, our President and Chief Product Officer, is phenomenal with design and brings our ideas to life, but she is a realist and has gotten good at shutting down Sean’s bad ideas. Ha!

Ryan, our Chief Customer Officer, is an amazing people person, maybe the nicest guy you have ever met. He is great with presenting our product to customers and bringing customer feedback to the team, but more importantly at keeping our culture light and fun and dissolving any sticky situations that might occur when Kerri does not like Sean’s latest epiphany.

We are a family – and no matter what happens, we know we have each other’s backs, and that trust we have in each other is what is most important.

Where do you see Playeasy in five years as a company?

5 years from now we see ourselves as a hub that helps connect the entire sporting event ecosystem - event organizers, destinations, facilities, industry partners, participants, and local communities with seamless integrations with other software providers to help streamline workflow and reporting. It sounds incredible, but right now we need to focus on providing the best product and customer service we possibly can this year in order for something like this to happen.

Fun personal questions:

Besides your hobbies, what do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

Sean: Playing any game - Xbox, golf, bowling, board games. Kerri: Beating Sean in HORSE. Ryan: Golfing in Bare Feet.

What is the most prized possession you have in your office?

Sean: BC Football Scholarship. Kerri: My ESPN Magazine Cover. Ryan: My Foam Roller.

What is your favorite sporting event annually?

Sean: College Football Playoffs. Kerri: March Madness. Ryan: The Masters.