Though the World Cup is now behind us, the fervor for the game hasn’t waned, especially in youth sports.
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and the most popular youth sport in US, but for many parents, the thought of which club, academy or team will be the right fit for their kid is daunting. There are competitive travel teams, recreational teams, academies, and other options abound, not to mention price points and distance.
Entrepreneur and IT engineer Teddy Wagnac, who manages a youth soccer academy in Miramar, has a solution for the uncertainty that comes with choosing a soccer team for a child: SoccerPath.
On the website, parents/users type in their zip code or city, their child’s age and gender and then select if they prefer “recreational,” “competitive,” “camps,” and “TopSoccer” (for kids with disabilities). After that, they can either see their matches right away or take a seven-question quiz to further narrow down the results.
“Soccer is the beginning – the goal is to do all of the sports,” Wagnac said of his future goals. He thinks the fervor to be part of a sports team will only intensify with the build up to the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in LA.
Wagnac launched Empire Soccer in 2024 and premiered it at the first La Copa Latina de Miami, a local Latin soccer competition and festival in Doral, so he could establish relationships within the soccer community. SoccerPath’s website now features more than 6,000 soccer teams and a growing network of private coaches. “Florida was for the testing phase,” he said. “Now we have all 50 states on the platform,” he said.
He said that SoccerPath currently has about 300 users participating as beta testers in Florida. The app is slated to be ready next month in the App Store.
Wagnac, who hails from France but lives in Brickell where SoccerPath is based, previously worked as an IT project manager, where he led cloud, artificial intelligence, and data projects for major corporations such as Sodexo and AXA Insurance. He completed two successful company exits, including TedWag Partners, a consulting firm.
SoccerPath is free for users and teams. He plans to generate income by charging private coaches a monthly subscription fee to be featured. “We want coaches to remain independent and manage their clients and pricing as they choose,” he stated.
Wagnac credits AI with growing his network of featured clubs and teams from 1,000 to 6,000 across the U.S. His team consists of four people, including his head of marketing, a tech advisor and a head of communications, and he plans to hire a chief data officer, and employees in sales and marketing, as well as contractors in every state to connect with coaches and sports academies. He raised $150,000 in pre-seed funding for SoccerPath, entirely from friends and family.
“We started in Miami but we want to help all the kids in America,” he said of SoccerPath. He hopes the recent relaunch of the website, which includes a new user-friendly design and thousands of soccer clubs, will do just that.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI: As the World Cup arrives, Plei wants to get more people off the couch and onto the pitch
