On paper, it’s a wonderfully simple concept. Football fans will wish they’d thought of it themselves, but it’s too late. Dutch brothers Bob (34) and Tijmen Zonderwijk (37) have already picked it up and are sprinting away with it.
FourFourTwo is in an office block about a 20-minute taxi ride from Amsterdam airport sat across a meeting room table with younger brother Bob. He’s baby-faced, with a big smile and bares remarkably little resemblance to his older brother.
“We are completely the opposite in terms of character, we don't really look alike either, people are usually like: are you guys, brothers!? Tijmen is more an entrepreneurial type and I'm a little bit more about the processes, controls, checks and balances.”
'We're looking after this for Ed'
Between us, up on the wall in the laid-back space (which MatchWornShirt has already outgrown) is a large framed Netherlands shirt with the words ‘ED’ printed in the middle where you’d typically see a number or sponsor.
“This was a gift to the national team’s players and staff. It’s not match-worn, it has flags from all the games they played at the 2022 World Cup. It belongs to Edgar Davids. He has a house here around the corner, but he still needs to come and collect this, we'll see whenever he has time.”
I start by asking Bob to take me back to the period when the seed was planted for a business that today makes a seven-figure monthly revenue auctioning off match-worn football shirts.
“I think it was Christmas 2015,” he recalls. At that time he was working as a lawyer with Tijmen. But their passion was always football. Raised in a village next to Arnhem, Bob is quick to point out they are not Vitesse fans – “We do have a soft spot for Vitesse though”, he admits. Ajax is where their loyalty lies, following in the footsteps of their grandfather and father. It was their dad who inadvertently led them to the idea for MatchWornShirt.com. As he approached retirement as a school headmaster they wanted to buy him a gift.
“We wanted to get something that represented him, you know, for the office wall, that kind of stuff. A conversation starter. We were like, ‘Are we gonna give him a painting? Are we gonna do something with photography?’ But he's not really into that. He's just a simple guy like most of us, he loves football and he loves his work.
“So we wanted to get a match-worn Ajax shirt because we were season ticket holders for 15 years, and his highlight was always the bi-weekly coming to Amsterdam, having a few beers, then going to the game together. His favourite player was Davy Klaassen, which describes a little bit of how my dad is – Klaassen is not the most extrovert player, but is a hard worker, driving the team.”
Ajax did auction some match-worn shirts at the time, often at Christmas, but they were corporate, closed affairs with money going to charity. Bob and Tijmen felt this wasn’t maximising the value of the shirts, and that if anyone in the world was able to bid, higher funds could be reaped for the charities.
Fast forward 18 months, and the brothers are wearing suits in front of FC Twente’s retail team, having convinced them to listen to MatchWornShirt.com’s first formal business pitch. “We had no clue. We went into the club and were clearly overdressed because the guy we met was wearing a tracksuit.
We had no clue. We went into the club and were clearly overdressed because the guy we met was wearing a tracksuit.
Bob Zonderwijk
“We bombarded him with our pitch and he didn't really flinch. Then he said, ‘Okay, sounds like a win-win, when can we start?’ We were like, ‘Oh, s––t, this is gonna be real!’”
This was September 2017 and Bob and Tijmen had just agreed to purchase the FC Twente starting XI’s first-half shirts from a recent game at €200 per shirt with a view to auctioning them off. “The pivotal thing we did was make it risk-free for the club. We take all the hurdles away because the club only cares about one thing: three points. Any extra stress doesn't work.
“We take everything out of the club’s hands. The only thing we need to do is liaise with the kit men. We usually do the pickups with DHL, we arrange with a contact at the club, and they just need to box up all the shirts. Now it's quite organised. In the early days, we were just literally in the dressing room ourselves.”
The brothers made a loss on the FC Twente shirts but remained undeterred. “You have to fall and stand up again – trial and error." The first time it was successful was their third auction which featured some ADO Den Haag shirts.
We take everything out of the club’s hands. The only thing we need to do is liaise with the kit men. We usually do the pickups with DHL, we arrange with a contact at the club, and they just need to box up all the shirts.
Bob Zonderwijk
“The club was nice enough to grant us 10 minutes of filming time with their two most iconic players. We came up with a bit of a slapstick-style script around what the other one’s shirt would smell like.” The content went viral, fans were attracted to the auctions which drove bids up, and other clubs like PSV took notice.
Quickly, the brothers decided to take their model to England and began pitching for partnerships there. They found clubs receptive to the idea of a guaranteed, no-fuss revenue stream that, until now, hadn’t existed. Today they have active partnerships with over 300 clubs all over the world including Chelsea, Spurs, PSG, AC Milan and many more.
“To be profitable, we need to make 25% revenue share on each shirt,” explains Bob. "We have a lot of data now, but we're just climbing out of our startup phase, and beginning our scale up. Every deal is different”.
MatchWornShirt now auctions hundreds and hundreds of items each day, from Messi match-worns (one fetched €55,019 which is their record sale to date) to South American women’s players. There is something for everyone.
Auction prices range from €89 euros all the way up to the €50-60k a match-worn Lionel Messi, who is ranked at no.1 in FourFourTwo's list of the greatest footballers of all time. Two standout auctions this season include the shirt Cole Palmer wore vs Brighton when he scored four goals (€41,127) and the shirt Erling Haaland wore when he became Norway’s all-time leading scorer (£25k).
Though revenue numbers sound good, a significant portion of that goes to charity. MatchWornShirt uses its business model and audience to help clubs raise money for their foundations. It’s a smart move that helps build relationships and trust but also makes significant contributions to worthy causes.
FourFourTwo’s visit to Amsterdam coincides with the company’s Movember charity drive whereby match-used footballs, from Tottenham Hotspur and Adelaide United, to AC Milan and Gremio, are being auctioned with all net proceeds going towards the men’s health charity.
Staff are also busy photographing and shipping hundreds of poppy shirts too. This is the sixth year MatchWornShirt have auctioned these, and incredibly they’ve raised over £3m for the British Legion in that time.
“It’s a partnership we’re really proud of. We have a lot of British colleagues. The Netherlands haven't been in a major war like the UK has, not in terms of an entire generation being wiped out twice. So that's maybe the most important charity partner we have.”
One of the most exciting and innovative things MatchWornShirt are starting to introduce is an authenticity process for their shirts called Fabricks. They can do this as the products come directly from the pitch, to the DHL box, and into the MatchWornShirt warehouse. There's a faint smell of sweat when you enter a room full of them.
When the shirts arrive a special chip, about the size of a 10p coin can be attached to the lower hem. Open a smartphone browser, hover it over the chip and it links to a page which pulls up details about the shirt: the game it was worn in, images of the player, stats etc. There’s capacity for a video to play. MatchWornShirt has ambitions to capture content from players to upload to this platform. E.g. “Hi, Son Hueng-MIn here, congratulations on winning my shirt at auction”.
A player confirming the authenticity of their match-worn shirt that you won at auction? Difficult to deny how cool that is. It’s early days for this feature, but in an industry hampered by fakery, it’s a welcome leap forward for hardcore collectors and fans.
“The key is to know that things are authentic. We have trustworthy partners, and we also always do our own authenticity checks, but if someone approaches us and says ‘I have a match worn Johan Cruyff shirt’ like, okay, how do I know? Is there enough footage to actually validate that? We always work directly with the club. I think that fans want to see that.”
MatchWornShirt are also in a position where they can put items live during a game, while the player is actually on the pitch still wearing the item, so fans can bid as they watch the game live. At this point, I ask the obvious question: what if the player throws the shirt into the crowd, swaps with an opponent, or decides they want to keep the shirt for themselves or a loved one?
“With national teams, usually the shirts belong to the players, but they usually also get many more shirts per game than at a club. It only works if everyone is happy.
With national teams, usually, the shirts belong to the players, but they usually also get many more shirts per game than at a club. It only works if everyone is happy.
Bob Zonderwijk
“Not everyone knows, but the players have several shirts per game. In the Premier League, they will at least have a first-half shirt, second-half shirt, and blood shirt. The players normally are not as interested in their own sweat, so they tend not to be too attached to their first-half shirt which is the one we usually acquire. Our business model is based around that.”
“Sometimes players really do want to keep a shirt. The Wout Weghorst shirt where he scored against Argentina at the 2022 World Cup, that crazy corner. He came in only for a few minutes and scored. He kept his shirt and that’s something we understand."
Terms and Conditions protect fans and MatchWornShirt. If you bid on a shirt during a game and then see the player throw it to the crowd, or swap with another player, expect an email explaining the auction is void.
Luckily, there are literally thousands of other shirts to bid on at MatchWornShirt.com. These money-can’t-buy items are now at your fingertips and the football shirt game really has changed.
