Company: SPORTL
Founders: Matt Austin and Ryan Lovelock
Website: https://www.sportl.co.uk
About SPORTL
Recently launched, SPORTL is a London-based SportsTech startup on a mission to make fitness more accessible while helping gyms maximise unused capacity. The idea emerged after the founders recognised a common problem within the fitness industry: many people want flexibility and variety in their training but cannot justify multiple gym memberships, while studios frequently run classes with empty spaces.
SPORTL solves this by providing a simple, pay-as-you-train platform that allows users to instantly discover and book fitness classes across different gyms and studios without subscriptions or long-term commitments. In the early stages, one of the biggest challenges was building trust in a highly competitive market dominated by established booking platforms that often impose restrictive contracts and high commissions on studios. To overcome this, the founders spent months meeting gym owners across London, speaking with more than 300 fitness businesses to understand their needs and ensure the platform was built around their priorities.
Before the technology was even fully developed, the team organised pop-up fitness events to validate the concept, build a community of early users and demonstrate the value of the platform to studios. Securing early investment was another significant milestone, with SPORTL raising £250,000 in pre-seed funding to support the launch of the platform and expand partnerships with gyms across London.
Although still an early-stage company, SPORTL has already begun making an impact within the SportsTech sector by introducing a fairer marketplace model that gives studios greater control over pricing and availability while helping them generate additional revenue from otherwise unused class spaces. By removing barriers to participation and giving consumers the freedom to explore different workouts on demand, SPORTL is helping reshape how people engage with fitness and supporting the development of a more flexible and sustainable fitness ecosystem.
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