Aug 2, 2021
The Story Behind Blocksport: Co-Founder’s Version
Vladimir Liulka, CEO and Co-Founder of Blocksport, like several first-rate tech entrepreneurs, has a computer science background. His tech journey started when he was fourteen years, during which years he began programming with his “made-in-USSR” MK-61 and MK-52 micro-computers.
In fact, he compiled his first personal computer POISK-III. When he was 16, he enrolled in the University of Kyiv, Faculty of Cybernetics (Computer science). After graduation, he worked for a short time as a software developer programming on Pascal and Borland Delphi.
Aside from his tech background, Vladimir also spends some of his time practicing Kyokushinkai Karate, which is his own words, “has changed my life forever.” He is still practicing the sports, and his hard work paid off because he earned a black belt in 2012.
Before co-founding Blocksport in 2019, he took on a CIO role for a big Danish IT service provider managing 100+ teams and 2000+ software developers, and he held this position for eight years.
His IT entrepreneurial experience is quite wide — launching software-based VoIP contact center solutions for Hollywood moviemakers, driving ISP (telecom) business, running an IT consulting and System Integration company. In 2015, he founded a software development agency with 100+ software engineers onboard and focused on Blockchain, AI/ML, and custom software development.
While practicing karate during his school days, Vladimir has always been a huge fan of FC Dynamo Kyiv from his hometown and the Ukrainian National Football team. But he noticed what fans are missing out on due to the still low penetration of technologies in the sports market!
Being a sports fan and seasonal IT entrepreneur, he birthed Blocksport and believed that his company is on the right way and building great products for the sports world!
Personally, Vladimir found his way into the crypto market during the rising of ICO projects in 2017. From 2017 until today, he has advised several blockchain start-ups on how to build great products, to shape tokenomics, and bring value to the cryptocurrency community. Among his portfolios are the tokenization of Swiss Franc and Gold for Swiss Crypto Valley-based start-ups, flight insurance automation via smart contracts for US startup, booking and reward platform for UK client, tokenisation of green energy, market makers for US/China customers, and 10+ projects. Irrespective of what he does, he always ensures that he stays on the technology side mostly. This is his passion.
Vladimir and Semih, his company’s co-founder, were inspired by the entrepreneurial minds in the crypto space and enjoyed working at the edge of innovation and technological disruption. Since then, they’ve been actively involved in the crypto space and have executed several projects together.
There was a clear market demand for disruptive but affordable technology in the sports industry. Despite the crypto winter, it was clear to the two co-founders that they need to execute the Blocksport project as soon as possible. It was a special time — projects left and right shut down but they saw their opportunity to launch. And when they did, it was an outstanding success!
Blocksport is Swiss innovative, platform focused on sports and entertainment.
In 2019 Semih had tickets for a football match in Germany, Bayern München vs Gladbach. To get more information on the match, stadium, and merchandise offers, he has downloaded the app from the app store. After 3 min Semih deleted the app again with a big disappointment. The solution was far behind his expectations.
A few sleepless nights and a couple of PowerPoint slides later, the idea of Blocksport was born. An innovative sports app solution that delivers state-of-the-art functionality that connects the completed ecosystem, focuses on gamification and revenue generation and is backed by scalable enterprise blockchain technology.
Today, Blocksport has a portfolio of over 30+ clients — Tier 1 & 2 sports teams across multiple sports and around the globe. Push notifications, Merchandise Store, Live streaming, NFTs, fan messenger, and missions are just a few of the features that the app delivers.
Since the NFT market became more and more popular over the past 12 months, their client demand for NFTs has increased where clients and prospects have asked them for an NFT platform where they can find all sports-related NFTs.
Blocksport combines Sports, NFT, and De-Fi to bring the highest experience to fans, athletes, and teams. With its network of top sports athletes and excess to the major sports teams globally, it can provide an exclusive set of NFTs and fan tokens on its platform.
Players can already start to participate in Blocksport today. After the platform launch in August, players, as well as team and fans, can immediately benefit from the NFTs released on the Blocksport NFT platform allowing fans to be one of a few owners of an exclusive digital card or rights holder and to receive rewards while holding those NFTs. So, a fan can do two things — support their favorite sports star or team and earn rewards while doing so. It is not unlikely that a fan might end up with a high financial return during the activities on our platform. That is why we have combined NFT and De-Fi in this unique manner.
