A Dutch amateur football site that climbed 8x in a month: not a hit, the season started
What it is A site for Dutch amateur football, covering scores, standings and historical archives from the top league down to the 6th tier. Scores are reported by volunteer correspondents at each club. It has a free app and a €4,99 ad-free version.
Why it went up It didn't really go viral. August kickoff lifted the whole category (the official voetbal.nl rose 4x over the same period). It started from 1M+ rank, so the multiple looks bigger. Real Chrome users still haven't returned to May's level.
CWhat you can take from it Build an official app that only covers the top few tiers of a country or sport. Turn lower-tier leagues into searchable archive pages. Recruit club volunteers to report scores. For revenue, copy the age-gated betting ads and the annual-pass style paid app that gets re-released each season.
Global rank 118k · 90 days ago 980k
A Frisian couple has run an amateur football scores and archive site for over fifteen years. In 10, its global ranking jumped from 1M+ to just over 100k. It looks like an overnight hit, but it's really the new season starting, plus the ranking method amplifying the gain. What's worth watching is how it survived fifteen years on volunteers and old archives, and one small move you can take: sell a one-time paid app as an annual pass.
Two things on the same weekend
On Saturday 2026 Nov 1, Dutch amateur matches went ahead as usual. That day, an app called "Liveuitslagen 2025 Pro" hit #5 overall and #1 in Sports on the Dutch App Store Top Paid chart. It costs €4,99 and had only 3 ratings (App Store chart, 11-01).
Four days later, on Nov 5, a user named Henk Rutten left a review under the same developer's free Android app: "werkt niet valt steeds weg kan geen verbinding krijgen", meaning "doesn't work, keeps dropping, can't connect" (Google Play review, 11-05). The app's store description still says "2019/2020 season" today.
Both apps come from voetbalnederland.nl. The developer listed is Jan Dijkstra, with an address in a village called Tytsjerk in Friesland province. In 2022, the local paper Friesch Dagblad wrote about them: "Jan and Yvonne Dijkstra manage the largest amateur football archive in the Netherlands."
What it is
A Dutch national amateur football scores and archive site, covering everything from the top league Eredivisie down to the 6th tier (6e klasse). It has fixtures, live scores, standings, top scorers, transfers, coaching changes, and historical results going back 2014 years. The homepage's right column is "Vacatures" (job listings), showing small clubs like VV Oosterlittens and S.V. Wykels Hallum recruiting head coaches. It also runs its own team rating system called KIX, with national, provincial and municipal rankings.
It was originally called voetbalnoord.nl, "Northern Football". The regional domains voetbalnoord, voetbaloost, voetbalwest and voetbalzuid are all still live, hosted on the same old Windows server as the main site. The tech stack is dated too: the app is a PhoneGap wrapper, and the backend uses web controls from over a decade ago.
What holds it all together is a group of volunteer correspondents. Every club can apply to become a "clubcorrespondent", reporting scores and writing match reports from the back end. App users can also submit scores themselves (Play listing: "Met deze app kunt u zelf actief uitslagen doorgeven", meaning "With this app you can actively submit results yourself"). Live scores for the 5th and 6th tier leagues, which official channels don't carry, are available here.
Why the ranking suddenly jumped 8x
Start with the numbers. On the global site ranking Tranco, it was around 980k in early August, dropped out of the top 1M in mid-August to early October, re-entered in early October (4), and then climbed steadily: 8 at 370k, 15 at 160k, 29 at 106k (the peak), and back down to 117k by 5 Nov. Over 90 days that works out to more than 8x growth.
But three things show this isn't a real surge in popularity:
- The whole category went up. August kickoff brought Dutch fans back to check scores. Over the same stretch, the official Dutch FA site voetbal.nl went from 360k to 85k (4.2x), and voetbalassist.nl went from 690k to 280k (2.5x). voetbalnederland's jump looks bigger only because it started from a much smaller base, 1M+ rank.
- The curve doesn't look organic. From Oct 4 to 29, the ranking climbed smoothly day by day, then flattened and fell. Tranco averages over 30 days. When a site suddenly gets counted, its rank tends to "fill in" day by day over the following month like this. Organic word-of-mouth growth doesn't usually look like this (inference).
- Real users didn't increase. In Chrome's real-user data, its Dutch bracket was "top 5k" in May (end of last season), dropped to "top 50k" over summer, and returned to "top 10k" in September, one bracket lower than May. Android app installs are 332k, with only 543 more in the last 7 days, around 60 to 70 a day (Google Play, 10-29 to 11-07).
So this is a fifteen-year-old site that rose and fell with the season, and the ranking algorithm amplified it this autumn.
Where the money comes from
No revenue is public, but three streams are visible:
- Web ads, including betting ads. On the site, the cookie banner has a separate option "Toon betting advertenties" (show betting ads), with the confirm button split into "I am 24+" and "I am under 24". Dutch law restricts betting ads to people aged 24 and over, so it splits users by age at the entrance and only shows betting ads to those who are 24+. These ads pay well.
- Season-pass style paid apps. On iOS, "Liveuitslagen 2025 Pro" sells for €4,99 with ads removed. The description reads "De 2025 versie is geldig tot 1 januari 2027", and the 2025 version runs through Jan 2027 1. A one-time paid app gets sold like a season pass: ship a new app each season and charge again, with no subscription needed.
- Merch. The homepage displays an ad for "sterrenpolo" polo shirts.
Don't take the paid-app chart position at face value. The Dutch paid chart has a very low bar, and a few dozen sales on a match weekend can get a app into the top (estimate). After reaching #5, it had already dropped to #126 overall and #3 in Sports by 7 Nov.
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | Scale | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Voetbal.nl (official Dutch FA) | 2.38M installs on Play, 70k ratings on iOS; 85k global site rank | Official data covering all clubs, with club management. No long archive, no cross-tier ratings, no correspondent community. |
| HollandseVelden.nl | Launched in 2007; 240k global rank, with a higher Dutch Chrome bracket than this site | Official data for first-team clubs, modern interface, sells data APIs. No community reporting. |
| Regional sites like VoetbalRotterdam and VoetbalBrabant | Regional leaders | Focus on local news and editorial, not national archives |
| Flashscore, Sofascore, FotMob | 10k to 37k iOS ratings | Global scores; Dutch amateur coverage only reaches the top few tiers |
The official app is the largest and has the most complete data. voetbalnederland survives by doing what the official site doesn't: old archives, gossip (transfers, coaching moves, job listings), and a group of people willing to report scores for their own clubs.
Where users come from
- Long-tail search (inference, fairly confident): thousands of club pages, league pages and season archive pages. Searching for a small club's old results can easily land here.
- Backlinks from club websites: club sites like afc.nl and vvdwp.nl display its logo and link, and correspondents bring their own clubs' people over.
- Seasonal return: every year in 8, when the season starts in September, old users come back on their own.
- Website pushes the app: the Instagram bio says "Check ook onze LiveUitslagen app" (Also check out our LiveUitslagen app).
Social and ads show no clear effect: a TikTok account with 4 followers, and almost no discussion on X in the last 90 days. No paid ads spotted. Its last press coverage was a local newspaper piece in 2022.
If it were you
C. Worth learning from, not worth copying. The site has lasted fifteen years on accumulated archives and a volunteer network, and followers can't get either quickly. This "surge" isn't real growth and doesn't mean a new market has opened.
Who it suits: people already immersed in a national amateur sports scene, like German Kreisliga, English non-league football, or Dutch or Nordic amateur handball, basketball or ice hockey. You know people at a lot of clubs and are willing to spend years building data.
Who it doesn't suit: people who want to see revenue within a few months; anyone in a country where the sports federation already has a good official app (the Dutch voetbal.nl has 2.38M installs); and people who can code but don't know the scene, since without correspondents there are no live scores for lower-tier leagues.
How to do it: pick a country or sport where the official app only covers the top tiers and nobody covers the lower ones. First, build fixtures, standings and past results as static pages that can be searched, one page per club and one per season. Then open a back end where club people can submit scores and write match reports themselves, with correspondents credited. For revenue, copy its two moves: where it's allowed, split users by age and show betting ads; on iOS, sell a "2027 season" ad-free app that's re-released each season, not a subscription.
How to get users: don't count on social media. Ask clubs for backlinks, find one willing reporter per club, and let search and the season do the rest.
When to get in: there's no window here. This is a business that takes years to build. If you do it, have the archive pages and score-reporting feature ready before a season starts (most European leagues kick off in August), so you can catch search traffic in the first week.
What would show we got it wrong: ① once the season settles, its Dutch Chrome bracket returns to "top 5k" or higher, showing it's more than seasonal return; ② it launches "2026 Pro" at year-end and reaches the top few on the paid chart on a weekend while rating counts grow noticeably, showing the annual-pass model can sell more than a few dozen copies; ③ someone in another country copies this model and becomes the top local amateur sports site within two to three seasons.
Data and sources: Tranco global site ranking (7-30 to 11-05); Chrome real-user data (CrUX, 2026-05 to 09); Google Play installs and reviews (11-05, 11-07); App Store charts and iTunes lookup (11-01 to 11-07); voetbalnederland.nl homepage and cookie banner (November); Friesch Dagblad, 2022-09-16. Where "inference" or "estimate" is written, it is an inference or estimate.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Voetbal.nl (KNVB / Sportlink official) Web iOS 2011-02 / Play 2014-11 2.38M installs on Play, 70,468 ratings on iOS, #2 in Dutch sports free chart; site Tranco 84,935, CrUX NL top 1k Official data plus club management features; no long historical archive, cross-tier rating system or correspondent community HollandseVelden.nl Web 2007 CrUX NL top 5k (top 1k before May), Tranco 237,860 Official data for first-team clubs, modern PWA, sells API; no community reporting or live score feed VoetbalAssist ClubApp Android 2014/2016 127k installs on Play, Tranco 277,569 B2B club management software VoetbalRotterdam network (VoetbalRotterdam / Gelderland / Brabant, etc.) Web VoetbalBrabant 2024-03 voetbalrotterdam.nl CrUX NL top 5K does regional coverage and reporting, not a national archive Flashscore / Sofascore / FotMob / LiveScore iOS 2010-2016 NL iOS 1-37K ratings global scores; amateur coverage only the top few tiers, no lower-tier long tail or historical archive voetbalarchieven.nl Web About 2017 Not verified a historical stats fan site, skewing professional and early-era - Where users come from
- Inferred SEO long-tail archive pages: thousands of club, league and season archive pages show up heavily in Exa / Jina search results; no keyword data
- Confirmed volunteer reporters and club backlinks: man20.voetbalnederland.nl reporter backend; club sites like afc.nl and vvdwp.nl carry the logo and links
- Confirmed users returning each season: CrUX NL drops to top 50K over summer, back to top 10K by September; voetbal.nl, voetbalassist and hollandsevelden rise over the same period
- Confirmed website funnels to the app: Instagram bio pushes users to the LiveUitslagen App; Pro hit #5 overall and #1 in Sports on the NL Top Paid chart on weekends (appstore library 11-01)
- Inferred social / ads: TikTok account has only 4 followers, x-radar shows 90 posts in 0 days, no ad library records
Research report on voetbalnederland.nl (Voetbalnederland / LiveUitslagen)
Channel: web (C1, Google Play developer site matches com.phonegap.live) | Research date 2026-11-07
Bottom line
It isn't a newly emerging product but an old site, running for over 15 years: a live scores and historical archive for Dutch amateur football, run part-time by a couple (Jan & Yvonne Dijkstra, Tytsjerk, Friesland). The Tranco ×8 that flagged it comes from two things stacking. First, the seasonal effect: similar sites rise together from 8 through November. Second, Tranco's own counting: in early October it re-entered the list from outside the top 1M, and its rank shape fills in day by day over a 30-day window. Chrome real-user data (CrUX) shows its NL tier in September only moved from summer's "top 50K" back to "top 10K", below May 2026 years ago at "top 5 thousand". Actual usage rises and falls with the season on a stable base, with no new growth.
1. What it is
- voetbalnederland.nl covers the schedules, live scores, standings, top scorers, transfers, coaches and job listings for national Dutch amateur football, from the Eredivisie down to the 6th tier (6e klasse), plus historical archives (archief_klasse_uitslagen goes back 2014 years) and its own KIX team rating table (cix.html, national / provincial / city rankings). Sources: homepage, KIX page (fetched via r.jina.ai, 2026-11-07).
- Formerly voetbalnoord.nl. The regional domains voetbalnoord / voetbaloost / voetbalwest / voetbalzuid all still exist today, resolving to the same IIS 8.5 server 185.22.13.220 as voetbalnederland.nl (dig/curl, 2026-11-07). The stack is old: a PhoneGap app and a login backend called mijn.voetbalnederland.nl built on dhtmlx.
- The data pipeline has something no official source has: volunteer reporters. Each club can apply to be a "clubcorrespondent", reporting scores and match reports through the backend (man20.voetbalnederland.nl "PERSKAMER"). App users can also submit scores themselves (Play description: "Met deze app kunt u zelf actief uitslagen doorgeven").
- Apps:
- Android "Voetbalnederland LiveUitslagen" (com.phonegap.live): 332,210 installs, +7 over the last 543 days (googleplay library app_day, 2026-10-29 → 11-07 rising from 331,667 to 332,210, roughly 60–80 a day), 1.23K reviews, 2026-10-11 posted a "technische update". #116 free in Sports in NL.
- iOS free LiveUitslagen (id 459356812): listed since 2011-09-16, 175 ratings, average 2.79, last updated 2025-01-15 (iTunes lookup). iculture.nl covered its launch 2011-09-22.
- iOS "Liveuitslagen 2025 Pro" (id 6740537949): priced at €4,99, the description states "De 2025 versie is geldig tot 1 januari 2027", meaning a one-time paid app is sold like a season pass, with a new app and a new charge each season. Only 3 ratings, but the appstore library shows it 11-01 and 11-02 climbing to #5 overall and #1 in Sports on the NL Top Paid chart, then dropping to #126 overall / #3 Sports (11-07). The NL paid chart bar is very low: a few dozen sales on a match weekend is enough to chart, so this isn't significant revenue.
- Monetization: display ads on the web. The cookie banner has a separate option "Toon betting advertenties" (betting ads) and an age gate "Akkoord, ik ben 24+", since Dutch law restricts betting ads aimed at under-24s. The homepage also has "sterrenpolo" merchandise ads. Plus the Pro ad-free version.
2. Traffic data (traffic library)
| Date | Tranco |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-30 | 867,991 |
| 2026-08-06 | 979,584 |
| 08-13 → 10-03 | Not in the top 1M |
| 10-04 | 974,741 |
| 10-08 | 372,663 |
| 10-15 | 162,969 |
| 10-22 | 117,044 |
| 10-29 | 106,151 (peak) |
| 11-05 | 117,519 (began to fall) |
CrUX NL tier: 2026-05 top 5K → 06/07/08 top 50K → 09 top 10K. Global tier: 05 top 500K, then top 1M.
How to read it:
- From 10-04 to 10-29 the rank climbs monotonically and smoothly, then flattens and falls back. That is exactly how Tranco's "30-day rolling average" looks when a step-shaped signal fills in day by day in early October, not the curve of organic word-of-mouth growth. As for which data source produced the step: Cloudflare Radar's domain API shows it in the ">200,000" bucket with no rank (radar API, 2026-11-02), so it isn't Cloudflare's feed pushing it up. It may come from DNS sources like Umbrella or Farsight (unverified). The app backend also uses this domain, and heavy polling for scores on match weekends would amplify it on the DNS side.
- Real-user data (CrUX) only got back to the 10K tier in September, lower than May's top-5-thousand tier at the end of last season, so there's no sign of more users than last year.
- The whole category rose over the same period because the season started: voetbal.nl (KNVB official) went from 08-13 to 360,862 to 11-05 to 84,935 (×4.2), voetbalassist.nl from 693,661 to 277,569 (×2.5), hollandsevelden.nl from 375,008 to 237,860. voetbalnederland rose more steeply only because its base sat just outside the 1M threshold, which inflated the multiple.
Conclusion: the "×8.3" in the resurfacing score can mostly be explained by "season + list entry threshold + Tranco counting", not by the product suddenly catching on.
3. Competitors
| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voetbal.nl (KNVB / Sportlink, Voetbalmedia B.V.) | Web + iOS + Android | iOS 2011-02; Play 2014-11 | Play 2.38M installs; iOS 70,468 ratings; #2 free in NL Sports; website Tranco 84,935, CrUX NL top 1K | Official data covering all teams (including youth and lower tiers), with team management features (attendance, laundry, kit duty). No long historical archive, no cross-team ratings table, no reporter community. |
| HollandseVelden.nl | Web (PWA, no native app) + paid API | 2007 | CrUX NL top 5K (May: top 1K); Tranco 237,860 | Only the official KNVB data for the top "standaard" teams, with a modern interface and an API for sale. Its positioning is closest to voetbalnederland's, with more traffic. |
| VoetbalAssist | Club software + ClubApp | 2014/2016 | Play 127K installs; Tranco 277,569 | B2B club management, integrated with Sportlink |
| VoetbalRotterdam network (VoetbalRotterdam / Gelderland / Brabant / Bollenstreek, etc.) | Web + several apps | VoetbalBrabant 2024-03 | voetbalrotterdam.nl CrUX NL top 5K | Does regional news and editorial content, not a national archive |
| Local sites (puurvoetbalonline, amateurvoetbaleindhoven, Het Amsterdamsche Voetbal, regio-voetbal.nl, etc.) | Web | Years | Tranco 750K–970K, or not on the list | Single-region news |
| voetbalarchieven.nl | Web | Around 2017 | Not verified | a historical stats fan site, skewing professional and early-era |
| Flashscore / Sofascore / FotMob / LiveScore | All platforms | 2010–2016 | iOS 1–37K ratings | Global scores; Sofascore has "Netherlands Amateur", but covers only the top few tiers, with no long tail of 6th-tier leagues |
4. Growth channels (where users come from)
- SEO long tail (inferred, fairly high confidence): thousands of club, league and season archive pages (team.html, klasse.html, archief_*); Exa / Jina search results are full of its archive pages. No keyword data obtained.
- Volunteer reporters + club website backlinks: club websites embed its logo and links, e.g. the afc.nl/logos/voetbalnederland-nl link and the "voetbalnederland voorbeschouwingen" on vvdwp.nl; reporters also bring their own clubs' fans over.
- Old users and season returns: they come back every year when the season kicks off in 8–September (CrUX and the category-wide rise back this up).
- App cross-promotion: the website funnels users to the LiveUitslagen App (the Instagram bio reads "Check ook onze LiveUitslagen app").
- Social: X @Voetbalnoord_ and Instagram @voetbalnederland_liveuitslagen both exist; follower counts unverified. The TikTok account voetbalnederland has only 4 followers (TikHub); x-radar finds nothing in the last 90 days. No sign of social-driven growth.
- Ads: the ads field on the card is empty; no evidence it runs its own ads.
- Press: Friesch Dagblad (2022-09-16) covered it as the "grootste amateurvoetbalarchief van Nederland", and iculture (2011) covered the app. Both are old news; nothing recent.
5. Timing
In the 2026/27 season the KNVB restructured the 2rd and 3th tiers into "weekendvoetbal", mixing Saturday and Sunday teams. 2025-06 set it; Sunday clubs sued to halt it, and the court rejected the case on 2026-06-26 (ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:3685; Voetbalprimeur 2026-02-11). The new grouping may make fans more likely to look up their new opponents' histories, which would help archive-type sites, but no data shows this made a visible contribution to its traffic (unverified). On the other side, a 2026-09-02 Play review complains "this season I can't even add favorites... matches keep loading", suggesting the structural change exposed problems in its older app.
6. Differentiation
- Deep archive + lower-tier long tail + community reporters: live scores from the Eredivisie down to the 6th tier (via volunteers), a decade-plus of historical results, KIX cross-tier ratings, and coach and transfer churn ("trainerscarrousel"). The official voetbal.nl has data but no "archive and gossip"; HollandseVelden has official data but no community.
- This differentiation has kept it going for over a decade and built a stable core user base. But it is not the cause of this "rise", and the rise itself is most likely not real growth.
- A monetization trick: the Pro version is priced as a yearly-pass-style paid app (2025 version used 2027-01-01). In the Netherlands, the low bar on the paid chart let it hit #1 in Sports over the weekend. The website uses 24+ age segmentation to run gambling ads.
7. Visibility
Few people know about it yet: no public revenue, no X big accounts or tech media have covered it, and there's no recent media coverage. The latest piece is a local newspaper profile, Friesch Dagblad, from 2022 years ago. No sign anyone is copying it (new sites like VoetbalBrabant do regional news).
8. What others can learn
- The long tail of obscure amateur sports data (lower-tier leagues, historical archives) is neither done officially nor done deeply. Pairing a volunteer reporter network with SEO archive pages can build a traffic asset that lasts over a decade. The model can be moved to other countries (Germany's Kreisliga, English non-league football) or other sports (amateur basketball, handball).
- A "yearly-pass paid app": on iOS, skip subscriptions, sell a one-time paid app as an annual pass, and ship a new app each season. Low entry barriers on small-country paid charts give exposure for ranking.
- In markets where it's allowed, use age segmentation to run gambling ads and raise the CPM.
9. Uncertain
- Not verified: which data source produced the step at the start of October in Tranco (DNS or something else), and how much traffic comes from the app backend.
- Actual traffic, revenue, and Pro sales are unknown. Pro reaching #5 overall only suggests dozens of sales on that day (speculation).
- The "€4,99/year" on the card is actually a one-time purchase, just labeled with a validity period.
- Whether the new "2026 Pro" will launch by year-end, and whether it can keep up the paid chart rankings.
Sources
- traffic library rank_day / crux_domain (2026-07-30 → 11-05); googleplay library app_profile / app_day; appstore library app_day (6740537949, 10-28 → 11-07)
- voetbalnederland.nl, /cix.html, mijn.voetbalnederland.nl (scraped via r.jina.ai)
- play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonegap.live
- apps.apple.com/nl/app/liveuitslagen-2025-pro/id6740537949; iTunes search API (country=nl)
- www.frieschdagblad.nl/sport/de-vrije-encyclopedie-van-het-am… (2022-09-16, paywalled; title and summary from Exa)
- www.iculture.nl/apps/liveuitslagen-brengt-voetbalstanden-van… (2011-09-22)
- man20.voetbalnederland.nl/ (reporter backend notes)
- www.hollandsevelden.nl/api/, hulc.io/blogger-van-de-maand-mei-2023/
- uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:3685; www.voetbalprimeur.nl/nieuws/1741206/
- Cloudflare Radar ranking API (voetbalnederland.nl: bucket >200000)
- TikHub (voetbalnederland account 4 followers), x-radar (90 days, 0 posts)