A side hustle in the football industry is a way for people to earn extra income on the side, typically by doing something they are passionate about or have a particular skill in.
Most passion projects start as a side-hustle before turning into a full-time business service or startup.
Use the examples below as inspiration or motivation to build your unique journey in the football industry.
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What is the size of the global football market?
Football is a sport celebrated across all continents, in 200+ countries and by over 5 billion people. You might have played, watched, coached, attended football matches. You’ve built new relationships and friendships. You celebrated wins, dealt with heartbreaking losses, and learned new lessons in both situations.
This is not something you expected when you started your journey with football, but this sport has had a massive influence in your life, teaching you important lessons along the way and helping shape the person you are today.
You’re here because you are curious or interested in starting a side-business with your passion. Maybe you’ve started exploring ideas, or maybe you’re already brainstorming, doing some research or have started taking action. No matter which stage you’re in, a side-hustle in football can serve as a way to channel your passion into a bigger experience and lead you towards a bigger idea.
Estimates show that there are over 240 million registered players worldwide and over 5 billion supporters.
While there is no precise number of the economic value of football, the numbers generated by FIFA should provide you with a general overview of how big this market is. The Fédération International de Football Association, known by most people as FIFA, has recently declared a record revenue of US $7.5 billion for organizing the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar.
In North America, a recent report commissioned and released by broadcaster Telemundo Deportes showed that the American market is primed for potential and profitable growth. On average, soccer fans in the US spent 7% more than the American sports fan on on team sports apparel. They’re also more likely to purchase sports-related items like tickets equipment and memorabilia.
To inspire and motivate you as you look to build a side-hustle in the football industry, here are examples that you can explore to share your passion for football with others.
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Coaching a team
This is a simple go-to that helps share your passion with the next generation in your community.
Your role is to help, support, encourage players so they can improve their skills and understanding of the game.
You might work with a specific age group, such as elementary school-aged players, or with a particular level of play, such as a high school teams or amateur local clubs.
Depending on the level, you may need to follow courses and earn licences to coach. Courses and certificates are provided by your regional or national football association.
Launching an online store
You can launch an online store to sell football-themed items, from jerseys to apparel and accessories.
This might require you to look into the different eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WIX or Squarespace to build a simple and easy-to-navigate website, without having to write a single line of code.
Lavictoire’s online store is hosted by Shopify, which has the ability to manage physical products like clothing and digital products like courses and online memberships. What’s great about Shopify is that it can be easily integrated with shipping providers, email marketing tools and other third-party apps that you can use to leverage your online business.
You can decide to manage your own inventory and shipping processes, or use dropshipping, which would mean that you wouldn’t have to keep any inventory or deal with shipping.
You need to make sure that you have the right processes in place to handle inventory, shipping and customer service so that you are ready when your sales increase.
You might also explore opening a physical store. Should your side-hustle become a full time lucrative business, you might want to explore adding new products, outsource some of your operations or hire staff to manage the store.
Writing about football
You can share your passion by writing about football, and building your reputation in a local market.
You can collaborate with a current platform, build your own platform or start a newsletter, in which you build your reputation, skills and audience by sharing topics in and around football.
There are a wide variety of topics that you can pitch to other platforms or write about on your own platform, ranging from match previews, transfer rumours to apparel releases, player stories, supporters culture and much more.
From a revenue standpoint, you can share exclusive content behind a paywall, place ads on your site as you increase traffic, work with sponsors or affiliates to feature their products or services that are relevant with the topics that you address.
Organizing a league or tournament
This idea will require you to reach out to local sports facilities, build schedules, find teams, negotiate referee fees as well as manage standings, discipline, playoffs and probably a few other administrative tasks.
There are already a few sanctioned leagues at the youth, amateur levels so you might want to do a bit of market research before you go ahead.
This side-hustle may require a small team, as you’ll want to make sure that you have all bases covered.
You can also organize a one-time or annual tournament and build it as an event, with sponsors, complementary activities. You could also have a cause attached to your tournament and give back part of the proceeds from the subscription fees.
Offering specialized training
You can offer training sessions to players who are looking to improve their performance and increase their chances of making it to the professional level.
If you have physical, mental, technical or tactical expertise, you can offer individual training sessions, group classes or digital programs designer to help improve their skills.
Players can schedule a session by picking a time on your calendar, based on your availabilities.
Launching a podcast
Podcasting is an efficient way to start a side-hustle with football. This would involve creating audio episodes regularly and distributing them on podcast platforms such as Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher, Amazon and a few dozen platforms. You can also distribute video episodes on YouTube.
You can produce regular episodes as a solo host, with a team of co-hosts, or have guests. Building a content strategy with clear pillars will give you clarity as you’re building each episode.
Once again, as any side-hustle, you may want to looking at building your processes and systems early in your journey. Writing scripts or preparing your questions for guests is a great way to facilitate each recording.
As any digital platform, you can earn revenue by selling subscriptions to exclusive episodes, advertising during episodes or adding sponsorships to your podcast series.
Operating a sports photography or video business
If you have a camera and an eye for capturing epic moments, then operating a photography business might be a great side-hustle to explore. You can capture games, events or tournaments and sell the images to players, teams, leagues, customers.
If you’re getting started, you can collaborate with players, teams, leagues and other platforms to build your reputation and skills.
You can also offer a variety of packages and services, such as prints, digital copies, and the option to purchase the rights to use the photos for commercial purposes.
You might also want to launch a portfolio website, where future clients can explore your work, hire you, select their photos and buy them.
Creating an online community for supporters
You can share your passion for a club, a league, a country with other supporters like you by sharing discussions, ideas, hosting watch-alongs, organizing in-person events through an online platform.
While social media can be a great vector to initiate these conversations, building a community on a distinct platform can really be beneficial. By setting up clear guidelines, you can ensure that the members are engaging in a respectful manner for others and for the community.
Hosting on a separate platform also enables you to create a structure around the different topics that you want to cover. Having that structure will then encourage conversations around specific topics and also help members pick the topics they want to address.
To host a community, you have a wide variety of platforms to choose from. The usual go-to might be a Facebook Group, but if you’re looking to build your own little corner of the Internet, you can explore platforms such as Discord, Geneva, Discourse, Tribe, Circle or Mighty Networks. Those are just a few of the platforms that can help build, manage and grow an online community.
The Lavictoire Community is currently hosted on the Circle platform, which gives you the ability to encourage conversations through their different spaces, host live events with their native live video features and launch digital courses and products.
Providing nutritional or fitness consulting services
This side-hustle can have you prepare a meal plan or fitness regimen for football players. You might provide this service as one-on-one coaching, after having assessed a player’s individual needs and goals. You can also group workshops or seminars to help players get familiar with meal planning and accompany them throughout the process.
Producing instructional football videos or tutorials
You can showcase your technical or tactical abilities by creating content that teaches your audience with specific skills or tactics.
You can create, schedule and share video content on digital platforms such as Youtube, host live Q&As or offer a subscription to access your video library.
You can build an audience by attracting them with shorter segments or add a newsletter service to nurture them through your sales process.
Running a camp or specialized training course or clinic
You can host a recurring camp for a specific age group or skill level where you earn revenue from subscriptions. In return, you organize short-term programs that teaches playing skills and strategy to players.
You can also organized clinics where you’re offering specialized lessons that covers a specific position on the field or area of the game. The camp or clinic can be held on a short period of one week, at a specific time during the team, such as between football seasons or during a Holiday break.
Offering legal services to players
If you have the skills to do so, you can act as representative or agent for players during contract negotiations and other legal matters. This would involve having you work with players to help them secure contracts with teams, negotiate bonuses and terms and also manage other aspects of their professional life.
This would require a very in-depth understanding of the football industry, as well as the legal requirements and intricacies of club-player negotiations and contracts.
Recap and a few additional tips
Keep in mind that there are dozens, if not, hundreds, of other side-hustle business ideas. These ideas should only serve as inspiration or motivation in your own journey.
Running a side-hustle requires a great level of discipline, structure and motivation. Even if it starts out as a small operation, you should still make sure that you have a strong foundation so that you are ready once you start building skills, traction, attention, reputation, audience and revenue.
Lastly, your side-hustle should channel your passion for football, not diminish it. If you find yourself disconnecting from the game you love, take a step back and see what’s not working.
