George Dimopoulos developed SportsBase, a management platform for youth sports clubs, with the goal of streamlining club operations into a single system.

A Wilmington native, Dimopoulos grew up playing sports. He played soccer at Ashley High School and later at Greensboro College. Today, he coaches players with the Pleasure Island Soccer Association. 

Dimopoulos said he began developing SportsBase in late 2023 while working full-time as a senior program manager at nCino – a role he recently left to focus on SportsBase. He began developing the platform after realizing a need to streamline systems used by youth sports clubs.

“What's happened with a lot of clubs is they use one system for their website. They use one for email communications and marketing. They use one for a mobile app, for team communication, and what that ends up meaning is they're doing three different things in four different systems … and nothing is connected,” Dimopoulos said. “SportsBase basically brings all those components into one system.”

When his own sports club asked him to find technology to support their operations several years ago, Dimopoulos said he was “underwhelmed” with the available options and said the high cost of the systems he found would be tough for any youth sports club to stomach.

“I thought, ‘Man, this is kind of like a perfect alignment of my passion, skill set and interest,’” he said. “That's when I kind of pieced together wanting to truly pursue it.”

SportsBase allows both youth travel teams and recreation leagues to manage their websites, communications, scheduling and mobile app through the platform. Specific functions include assisting with player registration and payments, managing schedules and tryouts for competitive teams, forming divisions for recreation leagues, handling registration for tournaments and more.

Early last year, SportsBase hit a key milestone when Pleasure Island Soccer Association and local clubs Port City Soccer and Wilmington United began using the platform. With more than 1,800 players, those early teams proved to be a “catalyst” for the platform’s growth, Dimopoulos said. A few months later, Pender Youth Soccer began using SportsBase, too.

“Those clubs have been live on the system now for a little over a year,” Dimopoulos said, “and then over the course of the last seven to eight months, we've signed up dozens of basketball, baseball and volleyball (clubs).”

The platform is used by a range of sports teams both locally and across the country, including those in Raleigh, Virginia, South Carolina, Texas, New Jersey and Florida. 

“We currently serve dozens of grassroots soccer, basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, rugby and lacrosse clubs across the nation,” Dimopoulos said. “Through those clubs, we support tens of thousands of parents and players.”

Dimopoulos recently raised an initial $200,000 seed round, which he said was led by leaders with Live Oak Bank, nCino and other entrepreneurs.

In the coming months, Dimopoulos said he plans to determine how to approach the platform’s future growth — whether to pursue another, larger fundraising effort to build out a support team or bootstrap the platform’s funding and operations in the near term.

Youth sports are a growing industry in the Wilmington area and nationwide. Dimopoulos noted that parents spent more than $40 billion last year on youth sports registration, a figure expected to climb to $70 billion. 

Dimopoulos said he wants to make sure SportsBase makes money in a way that does not contribute to the cost of participation in youth sports.

“By the time you pay for coaches and tournaments and everything else, it's difficult for even the average family to participate,” he said, “so when it comes to funding, I just want to be very cognizant of how I approach that.”

In the next six months, Dimopoulos said he aims to have the majority of Wilmington’s sports clubs using SportsBase. He’s excited to focus on the company’s growth in the coming months and wants to use the platform to help ensure everyone can participate in youth sports like he did as a kid.

“Youth sports changed my life,” he said. “There is no way I'd be where I am personally or professionally without having participated both as a kid and as a coach. It serves as a forum for kids to develop character, work ethic, health, teamwork, confidence, leadership and so much more.”