Media & EntertainmentItaly

Aileven

A live fantasy football platform — four years in the making

IndustryMedia & Entertainment

Team4 Members

Started In2021

ClientAileven

CountryItaly

Opportunity

Fantasy football has been around for decades — but the experience is mostly the same everywhere: pick your team before the weekend, then wait and see how it went. AILEVEN set out to build something fundamentally different — a live fantasy football platform where the action happens during the match, not before it. The concept was ambitious: a "Virtual Trainer" role where users manage their fantasy team in real time, making tactical decisions as the match unfolds, earning tokens through competitive play, and building a squad that also connects to a physical trading card game. It was fantasy football reimagined as an active, live experience rather than a passive, set-and-forget one. We were brought in as lead engineers in 2021 and have remained the core technical partner throughout the platform's evolution.

Approach

We led the initial engineering effort across the full platform — mobile app, web application, and admin panel — as a team of four. The platform started as WAU before rebranding to AILEVEN, and we were there from the beginning through the rebrand and beyond. The mobile app was built on Xamarin.Forms, the web experience on Blazor WebAssembly from day one, and the backend on ASP.NET Core. Professional football statistics were integrated via Opta to power the live scoring and player performance engine. SignalR handled real-time data delivery to connected users during live matches. Following the initial build, the engagement continued on an on/off basis — we were brought back in as the product vision evolved, new features were scoped, and the platform shifted direction toward board game and trading card integration. Throughout all of it, we remained the trusted technical partner with full context of the codebase and architecture.

Solution

1. Live Match Experience The core of AILEVEN — users follow matches in real time through the app, with live scoring updates delivered via SignalR as player performances unfold on the pitch. The Virtual Trainer role means tactical decisions happen during the game, not before it. 2. Fantasy Team Management Users build and manage their fantasy squad — selecting formations (3-4-3, 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 5-4-1 and more), assembling players, and managing their roster through the in-app player market. 3. AILEVEN League & One2One Matches Users compete in league structures and head-to-head matches against other Trainers. Match results, standings, season history, and previous encounters are all tracked and displayed in the app. 4. Player Market & Token Economy A built-in marketplace where users buy, sell, and trade players using tokens earned through competitive play — adding a trading layer on top of the fantasy experience. 5. Subscription & In-App Billing A paid subscription model with in-app purchase support via Stripe on the web and native billing on mobile. 6. Admin Panel A full ASP.NET Core web admin panel for platform management — leagues, seasons, players, matches, and user administration. 7. Blazor WebAssembly Web App The web experience was built on Blazor WebAssembly from the start — a single .NET ecosystem across web and backend, with multi-language support covering Italian and English.

Technical Highlights

1. Opta Professional Football Data Integration Live player performance statistics pulled from Opta — one of the most comprehensive football data providers used by broadcasters and professional clubs worldwide — powering the real-time scoring engine that sits at the heart of the AILEVEN experience. 2. Real-Time Live Match Engine via SignalR SignalR powers live data delivery to all connected users during matches — keeping scores, player stats, and match events synchronised in real time across the mobile app and web platform simultaneously. 3. Multi-Surface Platform Architecture A single coherent product spanning Xamarin mobile, Blazor WebAssembly web, and ASP.NET Core admin — all maintained and evolved over a four-year engagement by a consistent engineering team. 4. Token Economy & Billing Infrastructure A virtual token economy built on top of native in-app billing and Stripe payment processing — handling subscriptions, player market transactions, and reward distribution across the platform.

Impact

AILEVEN LIVE is live on the App Store and Google Play. The initial build was a substantial engineering effort — a live sports platform with professional Opta data integration, real-time match infrastructure, and a multi-surface architecture delivered by a lean team. Following the initial delivery, the engagement continued on an on/off basis as the client evolved the product vision, shifting focus toward the trading card game and board game experience. It remains one of our most technically ambitious client engagements — and a strong demonstration of what a small, experienced engineering team can build when given a complex, multi-surface product to own from day one.

Testimonial

Maurizio Pinna

CEO at Aileven

“AitchSoft was amazing during the project completion phase and we were able to successfully complete the project — we would definitely work with them again in the future. We want to highlight their great capacity to write clean, high-quality code and to configure the Azure environment to allow the entire system to work seamlessly. Thank you”