22 Best Business Ideas For Athletes & Sports Lovers (2022)

I was once just an out of shape, overweight guy with a goal to make a change. I started my health and fitness journey by losing 90lbs. The discipline and drive it took to go from never exercising at all to achieving such significant weight loss taught me a lot about goals and how to attain them.

TeamFFLEX is my online personal training platform that coaches athletes, Hollywood actors, professional musicians and everyday people all around the world. Starting with literally 0 dollars and a hell of a lot of drive I successfully built my business into the 6 figures in less than a year. Today, TeamFFLEX LLC does $48,000 a month and is growing continually month after month.

Hello, my name is Chris Meade, and I’m the co-founder of CROSSNET, the world’s first four-way volleyball game. We have created a revolutionary four-way volleyball net where four players compete in a hybrid version of foursquare and volleyball in a competitive game to 11, win by 2.

We began working on our first prototype of CROSSNET during the summer of 2017 when I and our co-founders Greg Meade and Mike Delpapa moved to Miami to start our business. In 2018 we did $74,000 in revenue and just one year later we 30x’d our business in 2019 to $2,250,000 in sales.

My name is Lars Helgeson and I am the founder of GreenRope, a CRM and marketing automation platform. Our company started in 2000 as an email marketing SaaS and in 2008 decided to focus on the challenges that businesses face in managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations.

GreenRope has over 1,000 customers in over 20 countries, ranging from startups to universities and municipalities.

My name is Sean Green and I’m the co-founder of The Sports Gambling Podcast Network and co-host of The Sports Gambling Podcast. In 2011 I hosted the first episode of The Sports Gambling Podcast with my partner Ryan Kramer. At the time I didn’t realize I was starting a business, I just thought I was talking about betting on football with my buddy.

In the following ten years, we’ve grown it from two guys recording their conversation in a garage to a legit sports gambling media empire. We have over 15 shows under our brand, multi-million downloads per year and have reached $30K/month in revenue.

My name is Sean Green and I’m the co-founder of The Sports Gambling Podcast Network and co-host of The Sports Gambling Podcast. In 2011 I hosted the first episode of The Sports Gambling Podcast with my partner Ryan Kramer. At the time I didn’t realize I was starting a business, I just thought I was talking about betting on football with my buddy.

In the following ten years, we’ve grown it from two guys recording their conversation in a garage to a legit sports gambling media empire. We have over 15 shows under our brand, multi-million downloads per year and have reached $30K/month in revenue.

I’m Alan Barker, founder of Infinite Discs - the largest direct-to-consumer disc golf retailer in the world. I’m a 42-year-old father of five with a primary focus on faith and family. I am very conservative and don’t consider myself a risk-taker, but the last time I worked for someone else was my sophomore year of college. I have been fortunate to find opportunities and then act on them.

I started this business as a side project just after I started playing disc golf in 2012. The business began as a hobby and an excuse to test out new disc golf products. I was hoping to make a few bucks back to cover the costs I spent on product testing. I never imagined that I would be able to make a living from this business. I could not have fathomed that I would one day have more than 50 employees on the payroll.

I was once just an out of shape, overweight guy with a goal to make a change. I started my health and fitness journey by losing 90lbs. The discipline and drive it took to go from never exercising at all to achieving such significant weight loss taught me a lot about goals and how to attain them.

TeamFFLEX is my online personal training platform that coaches athletes, Hollywood actors, professional musicians and everyday people all around the world. Starting with literally 0 dollars and a hell of a lot of drive I successfully built my business into the 6 figures in less than a year. Today, TeamFFLEX LLC does $48,000 a month and is growing continually month after month.

To date, we’ve bootstrapped our business to over $100,000 MRR. We’re especially proud to be the only platform in our space who serve the best interests of our clients first, having no investors to answer to.

Hi, my name is Paul Dickey, I'm 23 years old, and I am the founder of Spuds, a men’s performance apparel company currently based out of the Monterey, California area.

Spuds is in the very early stages of formation, starting less than six months ago. I am the sole founder and still currently the only employee (looking to changing that soon!). I am currently focusing our efforts on our production/product development, as well as marketing efforts to start gaining momentum.

My name is Sarah Wolfer and I am the CEO and Founder of Girl Boss Sports. I have been playing soccer since I was 4 years old and coaching soccer since I was 14. I played collegiately and semi-professionally and have coached at all levels from ages 2-22 including at the collegiate level. Most recently I switched sports and have begun playing professional tackle football with the Oregon Ravens who are part of the Women’s National Football Conference. I am also a licensed mental health therapist part-time as I build up my business.

Since starting Girl Boss Sports, I have hired over 20 women to become soccer coaches in the Greater Seattle area - this clearly shows that the common myth that “there are no women interested in or qualified to coach” is in fact false. In addition, we have brought in an average of $4700 of revenue per month over the last 6 months, partnered with over 10 other companies or organizations to work toward the same 2 goals mentioned above, and have worked with hundreds of athletes and teams in the Greater Seattle area.

My name is Seth Keysor, and I’m the creator of the Chief in the North Newsletter, a Substack publication dedicated to covering the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL at large.

In under 2 years since I started this site, over 5,500 subscribers have jumped on board and it’s reached a point that it’s gone from a hobby that pays to a legitimate side income of over $4,000 a month.

Hello! My name is D’Shawn Russell and I am the founder and CEO of Southern Elegance Candle Company. I started the company 4 years ago as a side hustle to make some extra money on the weekends and to get me out of the house. But it quickly grew to much more than I expected.

You can check out our brand story video here: Southern Elegance: Candles Crafted In The South

My name is Jay Fuller, I’m one of three co-founders of athlo agncy. – a personal branding startup for the anonymous college athlete navigating NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). Our flagship product is a personal branding workshop, pre-recorded in a MasterClass-like format. Facilitated by my other two co-founders – Aly and Isaac Nauta (brother and sister).

We’ve been able to add athlo ambassadors, participate in an event with UGA baseball and a sports accelerator, and have two on-campus workshops scheduled this summer with two different universities.

I am Matt Dawson and am the President of Ironmaster. We manufacture and sell our brand of home gym fitness equipment domestically and in more than 20 International markets. Ironmaster specializes in strength training gear, primarily of our proprietary designs. Our primary market is individuals who want to have their gym at home.

Ironmaster is a multi-million dollar company with a rock-solid reputation as an innovator, top-level service, and one of the longest established fitness equipment manufacturers in the world.

Hi there! My name is Sam Varnerin and I created Snuggle with Sam, my independent professional cuddling practice, while I was still working full-time as a construction engineer.

Here’s all of the contributors on the panel at CuddleXpo in Chicago presenting how we came up with the Code of Ethics for Professional Cuddling. Back left to right: Maryelen Reid, Madelon Guinazzo, Samantha Varnerin (me!), Samantha Hess, Jean Franzbleau, Fei Wyatt, Janet Trevino. Front left to right: Keely Shoup, Lisa Meece. Photo credit Rellian Chen Merrin

I am Matt Dawson and am the President of Ironmaster. We manufacture and sell our brand of home gym fitness equipment domestically and in more than 20 International markets. Ironmaster specializes in strength training gear, primarily of our proprietary designs. Our primary market is individuals who want to have their gym at home.

Ironmaster is a multi-million dollar company with a rock-solid reputation as an innovator, top-level service, and one of the longest established fitness equipment manufacturers in the world.

Ben Sarrazin, Founder, and CEO of the Yuba Group, designer, creator, distributor of load-carrying bicycles (bikes to carry things, passengers, sports equipment, tools, pets).

Over the past 15 years, Yuba has put over 50,000 cargo bicycles on the road. That is a lot of happy families.

My name is Jay Fuller, I’m one of three co-founders of athlo agncy. – a personal branding startup for the anonymous college athlete navigating NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). Our flagship product is a personal branding workshop, pre-recorded in a MasterClass-like format. Facilitated by my other two co-founders – Aly and Isaac Nauta (brother and sister).

We’ve been able to add athlo ambassadors, participate in an event with UGA baseball and a sports accelerator, and have two on-campus workshops scheduled this summer with two different universities.

I’m Alan Barker, founder of Infinite Discs - the largest direct-to-consumer disc golf retailer in the world. I’m a 42-year-old father of five with a primary focus on faith and family. I am very conservative and don’t consider myself a risk-taker, but the last time I worked for someone else was my sophomore year of college. I have been fortunate to find opportunities and then act on them.

I started this business as a side project just after I started playing disc golf in 2012. The business began as a hobby and an excuse to test out new disc golf products. I was hoping to make a few bucks back to cover the costs I spent on product testing. I never imagined that I would be able to make a living from this business. I could not have fathomed that I would one day have more than 50 employees on the payroll.

My name is Mat Hofma, and I created Mini Materials. We sell miniature masonry and woodworking supplies like cinder blocks, red bricks, pallets, lumber, and even molds to pour your own cinder blocks.

Since then we've expanded to different styles of mini masonry and even kits to build models.

My name is Jay Fuller, I’m one of three co-founders of athlo agncy. – a personal branding startup for the anonymous college athlete navigating NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). Our flagship product is a personal branding workshop, pre-recorded in a MasterClass-like format. Facilitated by my other two co-founders – Aly and Isaac Nauta (brother and sister).

We’ve been able to add athlo ambassadors, participate in an event with UGA baseball and a sports accelerator, and have two on-campus workshops scheduled this summer with two different universities.