Tennis Ireland has launched a significant fundraising campaign to further develop its elite junior players.
The Elite Players Fund, has been launched on the online crowdfunding platform PledgeSports.org.
The aim of the campaign is to raise €25,000 to provide for players travel expenses and to allow coaches to travel to international tournaments with them.
There are a variety of packages available to individual supporters ranging from a simple €15 to have your name listed all the way up to packages involving playing in pro-am tournaments and entertaining at the Davis Cup.
Tennis has done well through crowdfunding on the Irish based but internationally expanding platform.
James Cluskey and Amy Bowtell raised €27,000 between them in a variety of individual and some corporate donations.
“We are very excited by this initiative with PledgeSports,” said Tennis Ireland Performance Director Garry Cahill.
“There is a huge amount of talent in the BNP Paribas National Academy here in Dublin, but it’s very necessary for these players to compete regularly at an international level in order to gain experience and build ranking points.”
“We strongly believe that some of these players will be playing regularly at Wimbledon and the other grand slams in the near future. However, they need help to get there.”
PledgeSports founder and chief executive Richard Pearson added: “We have run many successful funding campaigns for players here in Ireland, UK and the US and, as a huge tennis fan, I am very aware of the financial struggles most players have to deal with.”
“Now, through PledgeSports these athletes can reach out to their fanbase and even commercial sponsors for help. With the right resources these tennis players can go all the way.”
James Magee won once but lost two steps away from the main draw in the Australian Open getting underway this weekend.
You can check out the elite players fund campaign on PledgeSports here.
PledgeSports are full members of Sport for Business and international Tennis player James Cluskey spoke at our Digital Sport Conference in November 2014.
