Boston Social Sports: Meet Up, Play Dodgeball, Socialize

I just met the founders of Social Boston Sports at the Boston Young Entrepreneur meet up and got to listen to their pitch. First off, if you live in Boston I highly recommend BYE because of their strong network of passionate entrepreneurs. Justin Obey and Brian Shaw, two 2006 Bentley College graduates, just quit their jobs to build their company that hosts social activities, adventurous trips, sporting leagues, bar crawls, and generally fun events as an alternative way for young professionals (target age range of 21 – 35) to meet new people. Other entrepreneurs and young professionals at the meeting were quite fond of the idea and eager to join their dodge ball league to release stress from work and let loose. For those of you who don't like being pegged in the face with rubber balls there are also soccer, softball, kickball, and flag football leagues. Justin came up with the idea at college when he was on the Red Bull street team and helped plan pub crawls through the city. Since their February 2007 launch they have experienced 800% growth in membership and have hosted over 50 different events that range from white water rafting to corporate events and parties with over 200 people.

Although they have over 1,800 members they are trying to grow their membership to over 5,000 by 2009. They came to B.Y.E. to gain feedback on how to do this while brainstorming with the group on how they can grow their revenues. Right now, their average ticket price of $10 is a bit on the low side, but good for people to not think twice about joining. Keeping the price low for young professionals is important, but for corporate events and larger parties, a higher price can certainly be justified. There is always a balance between a high price that will drive people away and a low price that doesn't communicate value to consumers. If the events are well planned, they can probably charge a nice premium for the corporate ones, which could be their bread and butter. SBS is targeting the college demographic with a campus representative model. Since they are building these casual sporting leagues I thought it would be cool if they could leverage the intramural sports teams that have already been established at the many universities in Boston. They could do this by hosting events and competitions where teams from rival schools compete against each other. This would be perfect to retain graduating seniors who are at the bottom of their target market and then continue to offer their service as they enter the work force. I see a need for Social Boston Sports, especially for new residents who don't have a network of friends. My girlfriend had this problem when she moved and found it difficult to purely rely on her job and bars to generate new friendships. Bars get old and depending on what company you work at; interactions with new people can become quite limited. Interested in signing up for a league or other adventurous trip? Visit their website at www.socialbostonsports.com.