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Match Play Events

SaaS subscription · pinball tournaments · solo dev · SF · since 2015
👤 Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen (Danish JS dev in San Francisco who helped build Podio; a competitive player scratching his own tournament-night itch.)🌐 sitehgstrp.com𝕏

A solo dev's tournament tool became the default software for competitive pinball: 1,500+ events a month.

Will it work? · our read
Owns the niche. The software is copyable; the decade of data, the OPDB standard, and the IFPA ranking link are not. Tiny market, but he owns all of it.
01How the money moves
Builds a Swiss-pairing tool for his own pinball nights
Becomes the default; results feed IFPA world rankings
Organizers pay $30-75/yr for premium formats & registrations
02The numbers
about 25,000Statedregistered users
2023-10
the sentence on the pagefrom over 3.7 million games of competitive pinball in the database. Match Play is getting really close to 25,000 registered users. “Group match play” is by far the most popular tournament format,…
about 25K
registered users
1,500+
tournaments / month
3.7M
games recorded
Founder-stated counts (Kineticist interview). Revenue is not disclosed. Kineticist
rev_line_value
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
  • The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
  • The founder's key move, and the counter-move
  • How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
  • The case against our own call
  • A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
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SourcesSources last checked 18 August 2026
Revenue is NOT disclosed. Match Play is a solo, bootstrapped product; the $50-150K/yr range is our estimate from about 25,000 registered users and the $30-75/yr freemium tiers, not a first-party figure (tagged Estimate, not independently confirmed). The user/tournament/game counts (about 25K users, 1,500+/mo, 3.7M games) are founder-stated in the 2024 Kineticist interview. The IFPA partnership and Match Play Ratings are documented on IFPA and in the product handbook. No fabricated drama: this is a patient, decade-long execution story, not a single genius pivot. The "own the ranking link, not the UI" framing is our read of why it stuck [our read]. We never score you.