From a simple idea on a beach to a product trusted by over 22 million fans worldwide and crowned App of the Day by Apple. Christer Nordvik’s journey in developing one of the world’s fastest growing football platforms is built on a ruthless focus on the product, his care for every pixel, and the value of saying ‘no’.
Initially created in 2004 as a personal hobby with his brother Tommy, FotMob has grown into one of the world’s fastest-growing football platforms, with over 22 million active monthly users, 100 million downloads, and more than 25 billion push notifications sent to fans every month. From real-time scores and detailed statistics to player ratings and personalised insights, FotMob covers every aspect of the game.
In this Industry Insider Q&A, Christer shares the inspiration for developing FotMob, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and why obsessing over the detail – and a fan-first mentality – is key to building a product-based business in sports.
Founders Christer and Tommy Nordvik with an early version of the FotMob appWhere did your story in sport begin?
I am a coder by trade and initially worked for a number of tech companies earlier in my career. My story in sport began on my honeymoon. Thailand, 2004. I kept trying to refresh desktop websites on a Nokia phone to check SK Brann scores. It didn’t work. My wife was not thrilled. I came home, built the first version of what would become FotMob, and twenty-two years later I’m still married and still shipping code.
In a full circle moment, in 2024 – our 20th year – FotMob became partners of SK Brann – the team my desire to follow was the origin of the whole story.
What does your role involve that people don’t see?
The CEO title suggests spreadsheets and board meetings. The reality is I spend a meaningful part of my week in a code editor, debugging push notifications at odd hours, arguing about button placement in Slack. A CEO who stops caring about pixels stops understanding the product.
What has been the biggest turning point in your journey so far?
The 2022 World Cup. We went from 7.7 to 13.5 million users in weeks. During this period FotMob was ranked #1 free sports app on iOS in the UK, US and Germany. But the real turning point came three months later, the users stayed. A decade of slow work, and one month made us an app people came back to every day.
Today, we are trusted by 22 million fans worldwide to deliver real-time scores, stats, and notifications. With the 2026 World Cup on the horizon this is another huge moment in our journey.
What’s something you’ve learned about working in sport that surprised you?
That a senior national team player would email me, personally, to complain about his match rating from a game the night before. The engineering work had become real to real people.
Player ratings have become extremely popular and a viral element of the product – especially with younger audiences. This might explain why 78% of our users are under 35 and 50% Gen Z. An ongoing partnership with the Sidemen Charity Match – which we cover with the same depth we do a Premier League game – no doubt helps.
This collaboration has led us to be the most downloaded sports app in the UK and the most downloaded app overall, ahead of ChatGPT, across the last two event days.
What skill has helped you most in building your career?
Saying no. We’ve rejected around 90% of the ideas we’ve ever had. No to features. No to growth hacks. No to acquisition and funding offers. Every no protects a yes. Most people massively underestimate how hard and how valuable it is to disappoint smart people with good ideas, week after week.
What’s one challenge people don’t talk enough about in the sport industry?
We don’t own the platforms we live on. Apple has its own sports app now. Google can copy anything we do tomorrow. Everyone in sport media talks about rights, content, distribution. Almost nobody talks about the fact that the operating system below your product can eat you overnight and the only defence is being better and faster than the companies trying.
What excites you most about the future of sport?
The collapse of the distance between athletes, fans, and data. Today a Premier League player shares his rating from our app with his followers. A 16-year-old in Lagos has access to the same expected goals data a club analyst has.
What advice would you give to your younger self — and to someone starting a career in sport today?
To my younger self: When you have the best product, do more marketing so people know about it.
To anyone starting today: the sport industry is full of people with strong opinions about sport and weak opinions about craft. Be the opposite. Obsess over the unglamorous stuff – latency, loading times, the tone of a reply email, how a button feels. That’s where trust is built. Everyone else is chasing the spotlight.
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Quickfire
Three words for the sport industry: Fast. Loud. Loyal.
One word for your role: Builder.
Book/podcast/person that influenced you: Lenny Rachitsky – a well-respected product expert who writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast – talks to the operators actually building the products I use and respect. It’s the opposite of the usual founder-interview format: no victory laps, lots of specifics. How they made a decision. What they almost got wrong. And why a feature was developed in that shape.
