Weplay, the fastest-growing social media platform for coaches, parents, and players of youth sports used by 1.5 million families nationwide, has announced a sponsorship deal with 30 Denny's restaurants across Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo, New York.
The restaurants will sponsor 200 local teams with a free, premium site on the Weplay platform and will launch a "Game Days at Denny's" fundraiser to donate a portion of proceeds from food purchases to the teams.
"Supporting the local community is always important to us. Weplay allows us to interact with our customers' families and their passions on a social, mobile platform that helps them manage their family sporting life," says Tina Beattie, vice president of Topline Restaurants, owner of the 30 participating Denny's.
"Thousands of teams, coaches, moms, and dads come to Denny's to fill up on game days, so we recognized this program as a great way to help them raise money and stay connected with them all season through Weplay," she says.
The fundraiser will kick off with 200 participating teams. Every time a Denny's customer mentions a team by name, 10 percent of the proceeds will be donated to that team.
Sponsored teams will also receive a free, premium team website on Weplay, as well as Denny's special offers and content. Teams will also be featured on a 'funraising' leaderboard on Weplay, helping teams keep track of how they are doing with their fundraising efforts relative to other teams in the program.
"We are excited to be working with Weplay and Denny's to help raise money for our local Pop Warner organizations," says Mary FitzGerald, COO of Pop Warner Little Scholars, one of the largest and most prominent Youth Sports Organizations partnered with Weplay. "Pop Warner teams are active in social media and this is a perfect way to bring a fundraiser to something our teams already use on a daily basis."
Weplay has a user roster of more than 50,000 youth sports teams that use the site daily to coordinate practices, games, snack duty, share photos and videos, and connect with their communities, among other activities. The social media platform has the backing of major brands including CAA, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, Gatorade, American Family Insurance, the Cartoon Network, and Benadryl.
"Denny's is social-media savvy, because moms today are major users of social media platforms and demand mobility," says Lane Soelberg, CEO of Weplay. "They appreciate tools that help them organize on the go, especially when they are connected with fundraising opportunities for their kids' teams."
