Future of Funding in Freestyle Sports

I came across an article recently from Dan Wood, head of the World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA). It was about the future models needed to support freestyle football.

The article was on LinkedIn and I’m not too sure how I came across it as I don’t normally spend much time on that platform. Since reading it I’ve had a bunch of thoughts on what he wrote, as well as how some of the concepts can apply to footbag as well. Both of the sports have a lot of shared roots but in the recent years freestyle football has really exploded in visibility. I think what the article has a bit to say on is that despite this big presence, there are still issues with making things sustainable.

Who am I to discuss something like this? I studied Sports Management long ago and I’m currently a primary school teacher. I also applied successfully to the Start-Up Chile Program, which is what got me going with this site. In terms of freestyle football – I try my best, but have competed (poorly) at many of the Australian championships and at a few events in Chile. I always have a bit of an eye with what’s going on in the sport.

I’m going to just start with putting the main ideas of the article and where I think some actions can be taken. For the moment I’m just going to suggest them for other people to do but some of these ideas I would like to take up in the future.

Community first
Paid Positions for Expertise
Hiring from within the community
Ongoing sponsorships with benefits for athletes as well as organisers
Data driven + owning the platforms for managing entries
Building more than just sport

Community

On the community – all freestyle sports, flow arts, whatever you want to call this sort of thing start out with small groups learning a new skill and eventually you find out about competitions and further opportunities to find other enthusiasts. Some of these get lucky with some sort of partnerships that come along the way, while the popularity will ebb and flow through time, with skateboarding being a great example of this.

You can see a good example of the community side of things on this video piece from the 2025 Superball in London.

I have seen and heard some comments over time of spaces not being so friendly to competitors, of certain things being set up because of the look rather than the keys for the competitors. So sometimes there is bad light, slippery surface, etc. To have the best performances, there needs to be the best opportunity for that to happen. There also needs to be opportunities for other events outside of the competition. I have been on things like city tours with the organisers.

Payments

Paid positions is an interesting one. Early on in the sports management course there was mention that you can only be at the kitchen table for so long. The problem is once you starting paying multiple people is that is an easy way to drain funds without seeing an increase in the money available. One position that I can think of that’s worth investing in is some kind of head judge that can make sure rules are interpreted in similar fashion across competitions. The other question, particularly around freestyle football where some of the athletes have serious personal followings is where is the line of who is being paid and what is that benefiting.

I will go on to some other thoughts around that area and using startup incubators and similar programs in this space. I think there is a role particularly around video work, which we have a lot of people across various communities doing out of the goodness of their hearts. Within these communities we have some amazing skills with video and it would be great if there were funds to have specific video content coming across reliably.

Data

The next topic is data based. My main thought on reading it was that things like entry, which go in with companies like Tournify to manage entries. On further thought it is the platforms like Instagram and the like which are currently bringing the content – there’s surely a space for maybe a wider freestyle sports segment to capture that kind of audience. Within footbag there have been some various apps under development on the training side, but sharing that content is another piece of the puzzle. The next one is the live broadcast, with Stadyo -another Start Up Chile project, coming on board for the last couple of Footbag World Championships.

I think there is some general concern about massive companies and the data but most of us are using these platforms as it is. In footbag we do have some community run spaces but in reality the most consistent source of information is a Facebook group. Footbag.org has things like entry systems and player profiles with results built into it but this is not used by all events.

The article from Dan Wood finishes with this question – How do we build this model in a way that keeps Freestyle true to its roots? What should we prioritise? Who should be involved?

The video above shows a great experience of collaboration between freestyle football and freestyle footbag and I know there was a smaller version of this at the recent Finnish Championships.

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A post shared by FreestyleFinland (@freestylefinland)

My suggestions for things to prioritise – and this will cover both footbag and freestyle football.

Having the best players in the major competitions
Getting media coverage before and after events
Connecting with schools and having programs in the leadup to major events
Appropriate surfaces and areas to play on
Cooperation between sports
Having clubs registered formally in order to be able to apply for government grants
Use startup incubators to build platforms for freestyle sports

Many people involved in these communities are travelling the world in order to compete – why not settle down for a few months somewhere and work on a project to support the sport? I haven’t thought too much on this topic in a while, but a quick search has brought up a few sports specific programs. With a worldwide interest, there’s also opportunity to collaborate across different languages, countries and more.

There are some thoughts on that. I have a bit of a plan to be more active with posting on here, I’ve dropped the ball on that in recent years. You can decide if that pun was intended or not.

Tags: Dan Wood, Footbag, freestyle football, sports development