In six years, Social Leagues has grown from a small bocce operation in Baltimore to offering a variety of social sports leagues in six cities with 100,000 participants.
The company continues to grow with last week's announcement of the acquisition of NYC Social, a New York-based social sports league, which will be merged with its existing operation, Play Big Apple.
Now its founder, Giovanni Marcantoni, says he wants to focus on increasing the number of participants it serves nationwide to 300,000 by 2020. He ascribed the company's rapid growth to the desire of young people to do more in the offline world as social interactions increasingly move online.
"We think that this industry is very much a young and new industry," he said. "People are living online, and there's not as many ways to get out there and meet people, or to just do something with your friends."
Marcantoni, 31, said the company began "as a hobby" in 2010 when he was trying to organize a bocce league in Baltimore. They added skee-ball, then sailing, and it grew from there.
It now offers sports that range from soccer to flip cup. People can sign up with friends as a team or as free agents and be assigned to a team. Fees for the spring season range from $36 (bocce and flip cup) to $160 (sailing), but typically are around $50 to $70. The money covers a T-shirt, equipment, field rental and Baltimore Social's expenses.
Read more at The Baltimore Sun
from http://baltimoretech.org/news/baltimore-social-sports-leagues-growing-rapidly/
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