Shred 2 Win

With many people vying to get sponsored in their sporting field of interest, there are many 'extreme' sports (or X-Games sports) athletes from around the world wanting to present themselves to attract fans, potential sponsors, product endorsers and film, photo and magazine producers.

Also, a lot of these X-Games sports athletes reach their peak when they are young (<20 yo) and there is not a lot of time to get 'discovered' whilst at their peak. This is partly due to them having other priorities and choices in life, especially with regards to making a living and education. Moreover, Shred 2 Win can help them make some or more of their living through sport.

Shred 2 Win's proposed site is a YouNoodle-style 'discovery network' for these athletes to setup profiles for displaying pics, movies, competition details and other relevant experience in order to build up a fanbase and generate interest and contact from companies within their industry domain.

The site is applicable to any extreme sport genre, particularly where athlete egos are often promoted to sell an accompanying product and brand. For skiers and boarders, much of their profiles could be dedicated to displaying self-shot image and video (as hosted on integrated third-party sites) from terrain parks and backcountry areas.

Unlike other sports entailing sponsorships (eg yachting, golf, formula 1, and tennis) extreme sports are spectacular to watch over the net, videos and pics can be taken outside of official competitions, are reasonably low-cost to produce, can be language independent, globally applicable and with competition between athletes high, quality media can be expected.

Applicable sports for Shred 2 Win include: surfing, rock-climbing, skateboarding, snowboarding, skiing, BMX, mountainbiking, rollerblading, etc.

Many such sports can watched as part of the X-Games:

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/expn/winterx12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Games

Besides for athletes setting up profiles, other entities may be competitive events, magazines, film producers, resorts, locations, media outlets, manufacturers, equipment providers, apparel producers and any other firm within sports industries that involve sponsorships, endorsements and athlete development.

Shed 2 Win seeks site sponsorships from organizations especially willing to feature their already sponsored athletes on the site as part of their profiles, along with the equipment their teams and athletes use and the competitions they enter. Shred 2 Win also seeks sponsorships from organizations seeking talented athletes to sponsor, support or endorse, which could include competitive events and mountain resorts.

Onsite competitions are held by these sponsors who want to pinpoint talent in this way whereby a 'profile freeze' takes place on competition day. One competition rule is that after competition day and the winners are announced, Shred 2 Win's sponsors have exclusive access to the participants for a few months in order to negotiate a contract.

Criteria for other competitions may involve metrics that include most onsite fans and most watched or commented videos.

Similar to YouNoodle's Startup Predictor, Shred 2 Win may run an Athlete Predictor.

Another noteworthy category of users are filmmakers where another competition is run for those seeking audiences, publicity, sponsors, distribution and monetization opportunities. Same too for photographers. Similarly, Predictors may be in place for each. A pay-per-view system for selected films could be instrumented.

What makes the Shred 2 Win site different from many other sports networking sites is the emphasis on having relationships with well known organizations seeking sports talent, and organizations open to connecting with other firms in the industry. It places an emphasis on identifying the needs of its different user types to provide for their success. EG:
- Small-scale apparel manufacturers and equipment providers seeking feedback and publicity
- Musicians looking to promote themselves to filmmakers for soundtracks