Posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2014 by Will Hagle
Tifosy is a “fanfunding” service with social campaigns targeted towards making football/soccer more accessible to fans worldwide.
The 2014 World Cup takes place soon in Brazil, and aside from relatively minor problems (like WHY didn’t Landon Donovan make the U.S. men’s national team?), there have been some large-scale issues associated with the event (as there inevitably are during any international event like the World Cup or the Olympics). 
Brazil residents have been increasingly protesting the event, claiming that the government is too focused on appealing to international visitors than to its own people. Tifosy is an attempt to help dissolve the barrier between Brazilian residents and the global event taking place in their home country by sending children from favelas to World Cup matches. The site describes itself as a “fanfunding” service, meaning that supporters of a particular club help finance a particular campaign — in this case, sending a child from one of Brazil’s lowest-income neighborhoods to a World Cup match happening in the same city.
Tifosy works directly with club teams to create its campaigns, then opens the campaigns directly to fans and allows them to support projects that they feel benefit the entire (I would say soccer, you might say football) community. Tifosy hopes to make the game more accessible to all individuals, rather than the revenue-generating worldwide industry that it has become in recent years. As of now, the “From Favela to Maracanã” campaign is the only one hosted on Tifosy. The way the campaign works is similar to crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter, in that there is a video explaining the campaign’s mission, as well as a fundraising goal and an easy platform to support the cause. Also like Kickstarter, there are various prizes associated depending on how much you donate (like a signed Brazil team jersey or a personalized thank you video). The cause is an important one, and if you want to support individuals’ desitre to attend the world’s biggest event that’s happening in their own nation, head over to Tifosy before the campaign expires.
