Having scored a few good goals in recent years, FanSaves is looking to expand its playbook in 2026, the founders say. FanSaves, a sports marketing firm from Cornwall, Ont. that allows fans to access discounts from team sponsors, announced last week that it’s partnering with Virtual Veep, a U.S.-based consulting firm, to expand its reach […]
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Having scored a few good goals in recent years, FanSaves is looking to expand its playbook in 2026, the founders say.
FanSaves, a sports marketing firm from Cornwall, Ont. that allows fans to access discounts from team sponsors, announced last week that it's partnering with Virtual Veep, a U.S.-based consulting firm, to expand its reach to the United Soccer League.
Kris McCarthy, co-founder and COO of FanSaves, told OBJ that the path toward the partnership started last year, when FanSaves began working with the Annapolis Blues FC.
“That partnership went so well that it turned into a multi-team partnership with an organization called Playbook Management International, who is also the owner of Virtual Veep,” he said.
It couldn’t have happened at a better time, McCarthy said.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity to expand our footprint into the North American soccer ecosystem, especially with the World Cup coming to North America in 2026. There’s a lot of hype around soccer … so we’re tapping into this enormous excitement.”
In addition to the Annapolis Blues, FanSaves has already on-boarded a handful of Virtual Veep’s clients, such as McKinney Chupacabras FC, Hill City FC, Texoma FC, Akron City FC, AFC Ann Arbor and Columbus United FC.
Shannon Ferguson, co-founder and CEO of FanSaves, told OBJ that the company will continue to onboard more teams as the partnership progresses.
Outside of the world of soccer, FanSaves has been signing other new teams to its roster over the past few years.
“We’ve been able to work with over 100 organizations across 24 professional leagues,” McCarthy said, adding that some of FanSaves’s clients include American Hockey League affiliates for the Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks and Nashville Predators, as well as NASCAR.
In early 2023, FanSaves was one of 10 startups that travelled to Florida to take part in the 2023 Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator program. Run by U.S. telecommunications giant Comcast, the six-month program helps early stage sports-tech enterprises scale their operations by matching company founders with mentors from major sports and media companies.
Reflecting on the experience, McCarthy told OBJ that participation in the program was a catalyst for growth in the years that followed. “It allowed us to partner with NASCAR and gave us a ton of credibility in the industry (by) getting backed by a Fortune 50 company. That allowed us to scale into a lot of new teams and get interest from around the sports world that we may not have gotten otherwise.”
Riding that wave, Ferguson said that networking and marketing are imperative to maintain and boost momentum.
“When we partner with a team, they’re promoting FanSaves on their scoreboards or on in-game announcements. Being able to see our brand, which started in rural Ontario, in almost every state and province across North America has been such a testament to our hard work and marketing model,” said Ferguson, who was a Forty Under 40 recipient in 2022.
And it isn’t just the brand’s presence that has grown. Ferguson said the firm updated its platform in 2024 to better respond to user experience.
“In 2024, we released a completely new update, look and feel to both the web app and the mobile app as well as new features. Contesting has been a really great feature and triggered deals, which we’ve had for a little bit but we’ve enhanced,” she explained.
Triggered deals are available to fans as the game progresses. For example, a new deal is unlocked to fans when their team scores a hat trick.
McCarthy added that the platform has been translated into French to attract customers in francophone markets to coincide with FanSaves’s work with the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League.
Looking ahead, Ferguson and McCarthy have “a strategic partnership in the pipeline with a major company in the collegiate athletic space.”
“We’ve always seen a huge opportunity to expand into collegiate athletics, where students are the perfect demographic to use our platform and want to support businesses, their school and its athletic programs,” McCarthy said.
In addition to collegiate sports, McCarthy said FanSaves is also working with an organization in France to scale the brand outside of North America.
“We’ve always envisioned our platform growing outside of North America, especially when you think of the opportunity of baseball in Japan, cricket in India or soccer in Europe. So this would be our first client outside of North America and we’re really excited about the opportunity of expansion into other markets,” he said.
No matter where FanSaves takes them, McCarthy and Ferguson say they always praise the Ottawa community for the role it plays in helping startups like FanSaves.
“The Ottawa media and startup ecosystem has been so important to our growth, from Invest Ottawa and SheBoot and even (Mayor) Mark Sutcliffe. People are supporting us. You can’t grow an international brand or business without the support from your hometown team,” Ferguson said.
“A lot of the things that we’ve learned early on in our entrepreneurial careers stemmed back from Ottawa’s tech ecosystem. No matter where we are, we always talk about Ottawa. We’ve had the opportunity to start a business in Ottawa and it’s a great place to do so. We shout it from the mountaintops everywhere we go,” McCarthy added.
- With files from David Sali
