Interview with Federico Creatini, Ceo Of FantaCycling
December 8, 2021
Interview with Federico Creatini, Ceo Of FantaCycling , the first platform for Fanta-managers dedicated to cycling!
It is true, when talking about gaming platforms dedicated to Fanta-coaches, the first thought goes straight to soccer, without considering that there are many other sports equally followed and exciting. One of these is undoubtedly cycling, a hard and strenuous sport that can always arouse great emotions even to those who are not really “addicted” to it. So why not apply the same concept of fantasy football to cycling?
This is precisely the question answered by FantaCycling, a game platform that allows cycling lovers to create their own team of runners and compete against teams from all over the world. Playing FantaCycling is very simple, just download the application on the iOS and Android marketplaces and start creating your own team of 30 riders with a starting budget of 500 “fake” millions available. For each day of the race, the fantamanager will be able to deploy 9 players of the team and will get points based on the placement of each of them. With FantaCycling you can also create your own private League to play with your friends and challenge them to the last kilometer!
For the full rulebook you can click HERE
Fantacycling isn’t just a gaming platform. Inside the website in fact there is a Shop section where you can buy fantastic uniforms and technical clothing entirely dedicated to cycling. To see all available collections, click shop.fanta-cycling.com
If you want to know more about the wonderful world of Fantacycling, read the interview with Federico Creatini, fanta-cycling.com CEO.
Hello Federico, it is a great pleasure to meet you and thank you for the time you are dedicating to us. Let’s get to the point: tell our readers what FantaCycling is in 120 characters:
The first app that allows all cycling fans to challenge themselves in a simple and fun way
How did the idea of FantaCycling was born?
The idea was born from a group of friends with a passion for cycling, after years of challenges with fantasy cycling made on paper sheets and with accounts manually done. Originally from Tuscany, a land very dear to cycling, and having noticed interest from many other people towards this game, we decided to make it seriously, starting from 0, taking advantage of the previous experiences in startups of two of the co-founders. We bet on a project in which we were the first to believe, not just for fun, but also at the business level.
How long did it take to shape the project?
The start was not easy, especially because initially we did not have the right people to develop the app we had in mind, then came to the Covid, which partly helped us, having postponed the start of the 2020 cycling season. This allowed us to have more time to realize the product, with a quality that distinguishes us and that allowed us to achieve great results right away.
We set up a heterogeneous team that allowed us to cover all aspects of the project, and thanks to the commitment of everyone we realized in a few months the foundations of the project that is continuing to grow.
How are fantasy managers responding?
From the very beginning, we got great feedback from cycling fans. This gave us even more juice in continuing to grow the project. The application was launched in July 2020, and a few months later we had already reached 20k registered users, a surprising result if we think that it was achieved without any advertising investment, but only through word of mouth among users. With 2021 we have further strengthened our community, which to date, after only two effective cycling seasons, has more than 51k users subscribed to the application.
In 2021 alone, about 4000 private championships were created among friends, not forgetting the 40k users registered for the General Championship, who challenged each other to the last race just for the glory. The goal of 2022 is to exceed 100 thousand users and become the largest community of cycling aficionados in Italy.
In Italy, we all consider football as the main sport of excellence. However, we know that there are many other realities just as followed as cycling. How much is this sport followed in Italy?
In Italy alone there are more than 5 million cycling fans, with more than 2 million people regularly watching the races on tv. Our mission is to bring together this community of fans, which, unlike football, often presents individual people who do not have a group of friends with whom to share their passion. Our goal is to connect this community thanks to our app and our social channels that are already creating new groups of friends and fans ready to cheer together their loved ones.
How did you launch the project? Have you used crowdfunding campaigns?
The project was born thanks to the sacrifice of the 4 members. We invested personal capital both because everything was born to share a passion, and because we also strongly believed in the business project that we created thanks to the app and we are sure that will bring us great satisfaction. This is to make everyone understand how business and passion are often the right combinations to create something valid and a project that gives value to both users and the team. Many collaborators and many users of the community have immediately offered to help the founders team, free of charge and only for the passion for this sport, joining the values that have made this sport historic, that is, fatigue and perseverance.
Now that the project is growing we are starting to define a fundraising plan that could include a crowdfunding campaign in addition to raising capital among private investors with whom we are already talking.
Do you also have your own team on Fantacycling?
Certainly! I was one of the main architects of the game logic and algorithms that are behind the entire computing system that made the game so exciting to users.
Despite all this, I have not yet managed to win a trophy within the application. Like every game you need skill and you also need a little luck, but I always got very good placements, but in the end, I got the most important victory, the one in the league created with the friends who helped to found the game!
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