Fanbase's route into North America began with inbound requests from the United States and Canada. By then the Edinburgh-based Fanbase had built a strong base of UK clients, and it now works with over 300 sports organisations and leagues, helping them manage and grow fan revenue while fans use its app to connect with their team and buy tickets.
The question for CEO and co-founder Alasdair Crawley was how to lean into that interest without letting anything slip at home, with financial modelling that hadn't been built around spending there. He came to it after a law degree and eleven years at Optima, where he progressed from junior business analyst to board director, stepping back to focus on Fanbase once he and his co-founders had raised £1m led by SaltPay.
Techscaler, delivered by CodeBase, became part of how Fanbase answered it. Product specialist Connor Douglas joined the New York and New Jersey cohort, and co-founder and CTO Carl Barton is now in Silicon Valley with Techscaler's fifth cohort.
Fanbase began when Alasdair and his two co-founders, Michael Crawley and Carl Barton, saw a gap in the sports market, where teams had a great deal of revenue to unlock from their fans. Evenings and weekends of work and some initial funding brought early evidence of fans and teams enjoying a positive experience.
Leaving Optima, his father's business, meant a significant pay cut with a young family, so the move became a 12-month transition. Knowing where he was strong and where others were stronger had taught him what makes a good team, and family and friends urged him on.
Today, the problems teams describe still match the founders' original list.
By last year, Fanbase had a strong base of UK clients and its first inbound requests from the United States and Canada. The team wanted to lean into those markets without letting anything slip at home, and since their financial modelling hadn't been built around capital expenditure there, they needed a way to afford the move.
Alasdair also wanted to go and see for himself what was happening in those markets, with a first goal of building on early wins towards a base of partnerships. Techscaler looked like a viable partner for that.
Fanbase approached New York as a base from which to meet new people and spend time with existing clients. Connor led the company's work there with a brief to immerse himself in Tech Week and go where he thought best. He arranged a session with one of Fanbase's platform providers, spending two to three hours on its new AI tools, while much of his remaining time went to existing partners in college sports. Around 95% of the plan was in place before landing, and building rapport with new people quickly was part of the brief.
Fanbase gives each US market its own job. New York is where the company concentrates on clients and sales, while Silicon Valley is about technology, with co-founder and CTO Carl absorbing how a company there operates compared with one in Scotland.
Mentorship adds an outside view to a founding team that already talks ideas through. Fanbase draws on it through Techscaler, including conversations with Entrepreneur in Residence Andrew McGinley, and Alasdair values mentors who have faced similar challenges, sometimes more than once, because an hour with them can save an entire year and build confidence in his decisions. Fanbase has mentors across topics from company culture to go-to-market, matching the right experience to each key decision.
Closer to home, Alasdair’s father, an entrepreneur himself, has always been a mentor and still hears all about what Fanbase is doing.
Fanbase now has baseline partnerships in new markets, which Alasdair says it has built in part thanks to Techscaler, and it's developing that base in the United States. The New York cohort let Connor strengthen relationships with existing partners in college sports and understand the pressures they face.
The company has also hired a salesperson based in the Bay Area, and a new adviser with a senior background at Google is joining its board to support go-to-market. Closer to home, it became the official ticketing partner of St Johnstone FC in April 2026, with a club-specific app.
Over the next 12 to 18 months, the aim is to become the number one platform in the UK market while establishing solid baseline partnerships in the United States, and to keep bringing as much joy as possible to sports fans.
Alasdair's advice to founders weighing up a programme starts with the problem: is it one they care about, and will it earn enough to sustain them while they solve it? Were he starting out, he'd look closely at Techscaler's mentorship and learning platform, and he values the expansion cohorts for reaching places with more people.
For the wider ecosystem, Fanbase shows what market access offers a company whose demand is building abroad.
Follow Fanbase on LinkedIn.
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