#1 Top 5 moments
#1 Our first ever social media post - September 2012
On September 2014, tennis Brothers started the journey on Instagram - initially I (the dad and founder of tennis Brothers) wanted to showcase Felix and Lucians’ junior tennis journey.
This was our first ever Instagram picture. Felix was 9 years old and an LTA funded Aegon Future Star player while Lucian enjoyed his time as an 8&U red ball player.
At the end of this year we had 900 followers on Instagram
#2 Our first major sponsorship - January 2017
Thanks to the founding team of Bidi Badu that had the vision to launch their new collection with us, as their main influencer face. From 2017 to 2022 we had the time of our lives with Bidi Badu. Whilst they became a well known clothing brand we had fun wearing their collections and spreading the word.
Make it stand out
This was one of our limited edition T-Shirt editions. Bidi Badu produced just 50 T-Shirts of the “Bidi Badu X Tennis Brothers” series. We then organised a massive “Give Away” so our fans could get their hands on them.
#3 Our first YouTube video in 2014 & reaching 100.000 subscribers in 2022
We started YouTube because we wanted to tell long form stories. The first 100 videos where published as part of our “Tennis Brothers Weekly” series. Topics where chosen randomly and it was all about having fun when playing tennis. In 2017 we published episode #100 After that we decided to stop the series and move on to a more storytelling format.
We reached the 100.000 subscriber mark on the 3 June 2022. At the time, we were the 15th Tennis Channel to reach this milestone. Today there are 24 tennis channels that have more then 100.000 subscribers.
This is a screenshot out of our first ever YouTube video. It was a compilation of the best scenes of some other shorter videos. The video got 200 views in the first 30 days of being on YT.
#4 The birth of the “Road to one ATP point” - January 2022
In December’21 Felix decided after a few weeks of intensive tennis training that he wanted to try to gain at least one ATP point as a singles player. He also wanted to share the journey with all of you and tennis fans in general. We were blown away by the success of Series 1.
On average 150.000 people watch each episode. At the moment we are publishing Series 2. Have a look at the episode where Felix trained with Jack Draper.
#5 Innovate, Innovate, Innovate - our first NFT Token together with FANtium
In 2016 I wrote a blog about the vision to make my sons Felix and Lucian the first community based pro tennis players in the world. In that scenario the connected digital fan base provides the funds for my sons to become tennis pros and play the ATP tour.
They would not have to sign bad sponsorship deals with agents, brands or rich individuals asking them for more than a fair share of their future earnings. Instead, they would be able to self fund their tennis pro team and decide independently what tournaments they play when and where.
Fast forward to 2023 and I'm happy to say that we have achieved this vision.
How we innovate & grow our community with Web3
We are at the forefront of Web3 - In March 2023 we launched a Fan Token with a new start-up called FANtium. They are building a Web3 based platform where fans can invest in athletes they believe in. After Dominik Thiem and Alexander Bublik came Felix as the first ever junior tennis player who launches a NFT based Fan token.
What is a Web3 based Fan Token and what value do we deliver?
Under the motto "Team Felix" we made 250 exclusive tokens available that enable fans to participate in Felix's success as a Tennis Player and as a social media influencer.
We created a value based package that contains 3 tiers - Bronze, Silver and Gold in which tennis Brothers will pay back a 10% share of Felix's tennis prize money for 10 years as well as 7.5% of the tennis Brothers media revenue over the next 5 years. We also added FAN Perks that are personal to Felix and that are not available anywhere else. We used NFT and Blockchain technology to deliver the Tokens to our community.
Within 7 days our NFT drop was sold out and we raised more then $50.000 for Felix’s tennis journey.