How a Hong Kong startup is serving football enthusiasts

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to play football but found all your grown-up friends busy working overtime, leaving you no one to play with?
Well, do not despair. Freekick, a Hong Kong-based football teaming-up and match-making platform, is here to serve you.
Founded in 2017 by four football enthusiasts, the online platform helps users to team up with others and organize football games, while also providing a one-stop service from venue booking to equipment arrangement.
“We know what football enthusiasts, like us, exactly need,” said co-founder Kwok Chi-kit. “Freekick allows individual users to join football games, at soccer pitches in multiple districts across the city, with simply a few clicks on our online platform.”
With its webpage platform, mobile application and social media channel, Freekick allows users to register for football games, after which the platform would team up individual users and organize games at users’ preferred time and location.
It also reserves the football pitch in advance for the games and arranges for equipment, including footballs and jerseys, at the game, saving users’ time and efforts.
According to Kwok, during the peak summer season, Freekick hosts up to three games a day, normally at evenings and nights, catering to the demands of those who want to play football after class or work.
Once confirmed with the football game arrangement, the platform will charge users a “registration fee” through credit cards or bank transfers, helping avoid appointment no-shows.
Kwok said the platform has now expanded into e-commerce, selling sports-related equipment and appliances, such as knee pads and football boots, on its webpage, as it seeks to establish partnerships with sports brands.
Moving forward, it plans to deploy artificial intelligence-powered technology in its mobile application, analyzing data in relation to consumer behavior and browsing habits, as well as football skills.
This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on Oct 1
Translation by Ben Ng with additional reporting
– Contact us at [email protected]
BN/RC
-
Energising HK's creative industries through cultural big data Dr. Winnie Tang
The government has planned to allocate nearly HK$300 million for the development of Art Tech. How can the funding effectively improve the level of local culture and arts, and further consolidate Hong
-
How to well spend the HK$300 million allocated to art tech? Dr. Winnie Tang
Local movie director Chu Yuan passed away earlier. In a lament, film critic Ka Ming recalled Chu's five masterpieces in the 1960s and 1970s. In his remark, Ka criticised that like most old Hong Kong
-
A cross-border ‘yellow cow’ story Ben Kwok
Almost all overseas fellows of my age that I know came to Hong Kong during the pandemic only for one reason: to meet their parents as much as possible. But in order to see their parents in person,
-
Advancing responsible business conduct Hanscom Smith
We need only look at the front-page news to see that companies are reassessing their business practices in areas ranging from preventing and addressing forced labor in their supply chains,
-
Re-opening Hong Kong a must Brian YS Wong
Hong Kong’s value to its country remains its openness, cosmopolitanism, and fundamental willingness to embrace and take on the unknown. It is its internationalism, as opposed to inward-looking