Well, it’s been an amazing year for SPC in 2023! Each year since we became SportsProsConnect I have written a review of the year gone by, and every year we have reported fantastic growth. Therefore I am very much expecting the growth to continue throughout 2024 and beyond. We have some fantastic innovations planned for 2024 which will only add to the SportsProsConnect Tennis & Padel platform.

 

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

 

1. A full re-brand, and new name

In September we re-branded and became SportsProsConnect – Tennis & Padel. The team were working on this re-brand back in August 2022, and as you can imagine, this was a huge transition. We have streamlined the platform removing several features to make it more user friendly for our members. We created a brand new look and feel for the site, with a new logo, new promo video and created a huge partnership with a video production company promoting our Gold Members. We also removed some of the memberships and  instead created Gold, Silver (Standard) and Bronze Coach Memberships. More about this later.

2. Several tournaments run and attended in Antalya and Mallorca

We created a big partnership with the Med WTC where I was lucky enough to attend tournaments in Antalya and  at the Rafa Nadal Academy, Mallorca. Med WTC is a team based tournament run for the U10, U12, and U14 age groups. Both events were played in world class facilities with several up and coming players who may well be the next gen Roger or Novak! Teams competed in singles and doubles in a round robin format, before playing semi finals and finals. There is much more to come for the Med WTC so watch out for more tournaments in 2024!

 

3.Many new coach placements!

Being a worldwide tennis and padel jobs platform means that the core of our business is the placement of tennis coaches into clubs, academies, resorts, federations and with players, worldwide. This is being made easier with our different coach memberships. Our goal is to provide a professional jobs placement service, and we thrive on our personal touch both with our coaches and recruiters. We have a WhatsApp group for the coaches, where we discuss new jobs and they give us feedback about the platform and what can be improved. Very early in the new year we will set up a group for employers and best practice. We are currently looking for an admin who will aim to administer this.

4. Several player placements into academies worldwide

We have several goals for 2024, and one of them is to grow the ‘Player’ element of the platform. This involves placing players in academies, and finding travelling coaches for players playing professional or aspiring professional tennis. We have successfully placed many players in academies worldwide (the highlight being a top Kenyan Player), and also helped aspiring professional and professional players to find travelling coaches. This will be a strong area of growth for SportsProsConnect in 2024, so please watch out for further updates and good news stories on this aspect of the platform.

5) Introduction of Gold, Silver and Bronze Coach Membership

Finally I wish to highlight the success of our new membership options for coaches. Coaches can now register for Gold, Silver or Bronze memberships based on affordability and a number of other factors. We have had many people applauding the flexibility of our membership types. We have partnered with Brighton Video Production who create our Gold member video CVs and who have produced our promo videos too. These videos  highlight our gold member coaches, their skills and abilities  in a positive way and is certainly the future for CVs. Check out some of these videos on our YouTube Channel.

For those who are not necessarily actively looking for roles, but want to stay as part of the network, we offer Bronze memberships, and coaches can upgrade or downgrade whenever the time is right for them. We also have our ‘standard’ Silver Coach Membership which has proved a huge success in recent years.

Announcements:

As part of our review of 2023, I want to officially announce that we placed our 400th coach earlier in December. This is pending successful visa application and therefore the coach does not want to be named just yet, however we will make a big deal of this in the coming weeks! With 400 tennis and padel coaches placed in 4 years, we are certainly aiming for another 100+ this coming year in 2024. We only started placing coaches in November 2019, and went through 2 years of the COVID pandemic, so we really are excited about our achievements so far!

 

Summary:

In conclusion, 2023 has been a fantastic year. We have spent so much time upgrading the website to make it so much easier for our users. I firmly believe that 2024 will be our best year yet. I have thoroughly enjoyed spending time in 2023 upgrading the site, spending time at tournaments and much more. We have many more partnerships to work on, more blog content planned and more targets to reach. Our Gold Members and Partners are entitled to work with us on an interview piece of their choice and we aim to have a blog piece (interview or announcement) every week in 2024!

As ever I can be contacted directly, and nothing excites me more when new members join the platform. Whether you are a coach, player, academy or club I look forward to working with you, so please contact me on WhatsApp +353867922188 or email info@sportsprosconnect.com