Sports are a passion of mine and have been since I has old enough to understand football. As a five year old kid I was hooked on the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. I would make sure my parents knew I needed to be home in time to catch every game….even the meaningless preseason ones. Over the years I have had to prune my sports watching tree as my free time has diminished from that five year old kid. But I still keep up with every Falcons game, the NFL in general, and as much as possible of some other major sports.
A new interest of mine is crowdfunding. I enjoy seeing average people get the money they need to start a new business or just a simple project. There have been some incredible products introduced to the world through Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Without these platforms, many creative people would have been left out in the cold by traditional funding methods. Mixing smart people with crowds excited enough to help, make new projects a possibility.
I wanted to see what sports related projects I could find on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. They didn’t have to be the most successful ones or even current campaigns. I just wanted to put together a list that was interesting to me and hopefully would be for you all. Maybe these ideas will spark some more sports related ideas that could get funded in the future.
- DIY Waterproof Kit For Earbuds & MP3 players Made For Sports – Sweat is not good for earphones. You know this if you have spent any amount of time running or doing other workouts while listening to your headphones. Electronics are not meant to get wet generally, so earbuds are constantly ruined every couple months due to sweat. This simple product is meant to protect your earbuds with a waterproof application you can do yourself. It even adds water resistance to your MP3 player.
- “WHO IS LOU GEHRIG?” -an inspiring film about ALS – 248 people jumped in to help fund this documentary about a terrible disease, ALS, that struck basketball coach Jeff Fogel. ALS destroying a person’s body is hard to watch, as I have seen a couple of films on other people’s battle with the disease. This film aims to show how coach Fogel deals with the disease with his positive attitude and imagination.
- Official Jessica Redfield Sports Journalism Scholarship Fund – A tragedy sparked this campaign that ended up raising over $54K for a journalism scholarship fund. Jessica Redfield was a victim of the horrible theater shootings back in 2012 in Aurora Colorado. Her dream of a career in sports journalism was ended by an evil individual. But her passion lives on through the goodness of hundreds of individuals who were moved by her story.
- Duke – Carolina, The Blue Blood Rivalry Documentary Film – If you know anything about college basketball, then you know of the North Carolina and Duke hatred. These two schools and communities simply do not care for each other. This documentary will dive deep into the rivalry with interviews, game footage, and stories from the history of this heated feud. The biggest backers of the campaign would have gotten to be on set for some big name sports figures’ interviews, including Michael Jordan. $10,000 was a bit too much apparently as there were no takers on that level. The campaign did receive fully funded backing though.
- Disappointing Moments In Cleveland Sports Coloring Book – Crowdsourcing at its best. This guy only wanted two grand to do the simple project that conveyed “why daddy is sad on Sundays”. He ended up getting nearly $24,000, which was 1198% of his goal! I have seen Cleveland sports endure some horrific sports losses including a fumble that cost them a trip to the Super Bowl, Lebron cheating on the city with Miami, and John Elway carving up the Browns defense in an epic drive that cost them another trip to the big game. A coloring book depicting the downtrodden Cleveland sports fan was a brilliant idea.
