The founding story to FAYDER goes back to the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome, where I paid a lot of money to watch very little golf.
Tens of thousands of fans showed up, passionate and willing to spend. Tickets were expensive. Food and drink more so. And yet most of us spent the day jostling for position, struggling to see anything, watching streams on our phones from inside the venue. Then I noticed Peter Jones (Dragons Den) among them moving through the course with the players, close to the action, on the inside. The contrast was stark. The rest of us weren't just further from the athletes; we weren't close at all. That stayed with me.
Around the same time I was getting deeper into golf myself, playing with coaches who'd been on tour and spending time around current professionals. A recurring theme kept coming up: the financial reality of a sporting career. Before the sponsorships and prize money, most athletes are self-funding and many quit before they get the chance to find out how good they could be. The British Elite Athletes Association put a number on it. Of the 120+ athletes they surveyed who competed at Paris 2024, 86% said they doubted they could afford to keep going until Los Angeles 2028.
That's when it clicked. Fans want to be closer to the athletes they follow. Athletes need more sustainable ways to fund their careers. These aren't separate problems they're the same problem, approached from opposite sides.
FAYDER is the bridge. Fans subscribe to athletes directly unlocking tiered access to training, thinking, and the unfiltered journey most never see. In return, athletes earn a direct revenue stream from the people already invested in their success. A new category of sports relationship, one that didn't exist before.