A few weeks of watching the world’s best soccer players has a funny effect on people.
Someone watches a perfectly placed through ball from midfield, spends ninety minutes criticizing professional athletes from the comfort of a couch, and then suddenly decides it’s time to dust off the cleats they haven’t touched in three years.
For Miami startup Plei, that’s a business model.
With the FIFA World Cup arriving and Miami taking center stage as one of the tournament’s host cities, the Coral Gables-based startup is preparing for what could be one of its busiest periods yet. Plei, which helps users find and join pickup soccer games, is betting that the world’s biggest sporting event will create more fans and, consequently, more players.
During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the company tripled in size in just one month. “The good thing was not only did the company triple in size during that time, it sustained itself after that,” Sebastian Duque, co-founder and CEO of Plei, told Refresh Miami.
According to Duque, major soccer moments tend to trigger a familiar pattern. People start by watching the game. Then they convince themselves they can do at least some of what they’re seeing on television.
“We’ve seen that happen at other major soccer moments where people just get so obsessed with the game,” he said. “Not only do they watch it, they go play after.”
Today, Plei has nearly 600,000 users across 28 cities, making it the largest pickup soccer platform in North America. The company employs roughly 45 people, including about 15 in Miami.
This summer, Plei is rolling out a series of tournament-related activations, many of which remain under wraps because of FIFA’s famously strict sponsorship rules. But one initiative Duque can discuss is a campaign called “26 for $6.”
The concept is simple: reduce the cost of many games to just $6 per player, roughly half the platform’s average price today.
In a tournament where ticket prices and travel costs have generated plenty of conversation, Plei is taking a different approach.
“In a world where there’s a lot of stigma around the pricing of the World Cup and the tickets and the travel and all these things, we’re choosing to make soccer even more accessible,” Duque said.
The company is also receiving a major visibility boost from Apple, which selected Plei for a featured App Store story during the tournament.
Still, for Duque, the real goal isn’t downloads. It’s quite the opposite, in fact: connection.
“In a world of technology and AI and social media that in many ways has disconnected us as a society, Plei fills in that gap where we’re really connecting our users in the real world through a shared passion and shared love,” he said.
That mission has roots in Miami itself.
“I was born and raised here. The company was founded in Kendall,” Duque said. “Miami is just a really good place where not only you can test out your ideas, but you can also collaborate with other people in the community.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
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- What happens when a digital twin grows up? FIT:MATCH’s leap into sports and health
- Skyscanner is doubling down on Miami, and betting Dolphins fans will travel with it
- As the World Cup arrives, Plei wants to get more people off the couch and onto the pitch – June 11, 2026
- With Minu acquisition, Miami-based unicorn Betterfly doubles down on U.S. growth – June 10, 2026
- Hallandale-based Lexful raises $7M seed round to reinvent IT documentation for the AI era – June 10, 2026
