The Croatian company Sofascore, with its eponymous application, is one of the largest sources of sports statistics in Europe and the world. The company's CEO, Zlatko Hrkać, spoke at this year's MoStart conference panel titled "IT Day and Zlatko Hrkać: From Oliver Dragojević to 25M Users," where he discussed how he, along with his friend Ivan Bešlić, the Chief Operations Officer, launched an application offering detailed insights into the statistics for various sports, employing over 300 people, 240 of whom are in Croatia.
"Sofascore is a sports platform for advanced statistics. We track the results of all professional leagues, and now we have many additional products within Sofascore. Some of them include the Sofascore editor, an application that can be used by any clubs, leagues, or associations to enter lower-league sports. We wanted to move away from just tracking professional sports. We cover 25 sports, and we have 25 million users who access Sofascore monthly. A significant number of them, around 7 or 8 million, use it daily," said Hrkać.
He explained that the most crucial aspect of the company's growth was organizing the system so that every employee knows what their task is as soon as they join the company. Without organization, Hrkać believes, there is no stable and concrete growth.
"We arrived at this project through a hobby—blogging. My colleague Ivan Bešlić wrote on general topics on his blog, while I wrote about Oliver Dragojević, song lyrics, and similar content. Over time, the blog grew. Since Bešlić and I were competing on whose blog would get more visits, we joined forces and created the forum Cesarica.net," Hrkać revealed.
The idea, he explained, was to create an Oliver Dragojević fan club where people could exchange messages. Soon, other people started contacting them, wanting to write their own blogs on the forum.
"Over time, we gathered a team that organically wrote content on the forum, something that Google values most in terms of SEO and ranking. As a result, Cesarica's forum ranking was quite high. Over time, we started opening other categories, and we were always exploring what could be interesting. For example, at one point, school reading lists were very popular. Then we opened a sports category, which interested a broader audience. We had a large male audience, but we were missing the female part. One girl wrote a post titled 'The Most Beautiful Women's Shoes,' and it received the most visits by far," Hrkać recalled.
He said that the whole story changed when Google launched AdSense and when they received their first check for $177 in Croatia in 2007. This, Hrkać added, gave them a different perspective on the web and how they thought about it.
"When we thought about how to have additional income after finishing college, we set ourselves goals. Our first goal was to earn 2,000 kuna to pay for a car loan so that the website could pay off the car. Every time brings its opportunities. There are no blogs anymore, but now there are opportunities that you can take advantage of, you just need to recognize them. Our opportunities were the beginnings of smartphones and applications," he added.
He also mentioned that in 2011, Google invited them to Dublin. At that time, they were earning 12,000-15,000 euros from checks, which they reinvested as much as possible in Facebook ads. However, Google advised them to focus on applications.
"If we hadn't created that application and moved forward, time would have caught up with us. Moreover, what was very useful then and still applies today is SEO. Whatever you do, if you're well-ranked on Google, you'll have work. The third thing was that the growth of web advertising was exponential," said Hrkać.
He emphasized that the turning point was that they needed Google and were heavily reliant on it, but Google also needed them because they had data, which remains crucial today.
"The reason we cover amateur leagues today is that data is the most important. Everything else you can buy is less important, but if you have organic content or data, that’s something that is priceless. Back then, when we had Cesarica with an excellent ranking, Google launched the Translate API. They wanted to develop their Translate algorithm but needed data. They allowed anyone to install a plugin on their website to automatically translate it into 52 languages. One evening, we played around and overnight translated Cesarica.net into 52 languages. Our record was usually 150 people in real-time, but the next morning, the number jumped to 300. By 10 AM, we had already made more revenue than the entire previous day," he emphasized.
After that, he noted, they began writing even more about sports, and whatever they wrote would end up on Google’s first or second page.
"We were aware that it wouldn’t last forever, so we decided to continue developing. Due to that sports sub-forum on Cesarica, we developed Sofascore. We didn’t create anything new or revolutionary, but we made something better and different," added Hrkać, who also spoke on the panel about branding, statistics, and evaluating professional athletes, as well as their relationship with the application.
In conclusion, he mentioned that there is no universal recipe for success, adding that they worked hard and had low expectations. "Take advantage of opportunities and be persistent, and use criticism to your advantage," concluded Hrkać.
The second edition of the MoStart conference was held from April 24 to 26, 2024, at the University of Mostar. The conference was organized by the University of Mostar and the Center for Information Technology of the University of Mostar - SUMIT, in collaboration with the Croatian Academic and Research Network CARNET, the Agency for Commercial Activities – AKD, the Ministry of Science, Education, Culture, and Sports of HBŽ, the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth, Culture, and Sports of SBŽ, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports of ŽZH, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports of the Posavina County, the Institute for Education of ŽZH and HBŽ, and the Institute for Schooling of Mostar.
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