Toca Football Inc., a technology-enabled soccer training experience, opened a Denver facility in January and is seeking to continue its nationwide expansion with more locations in Colorado.
The company, created by two-time FIFA World Cup midfielder Eddie Lewis, raised $40 million last summer and has since used the capital to expand its footprint across North America. Toca has 30 sites in the United States and Canada that it has either opened already or is in the process of acquiring, Lewis said. Toca plans to add 10 more locations by the end of the year — and it's targeting Colorado.
"We're aggressively trying to figure out how we can find more opportunities for centers around the Denver market," Lewis told the Denver Business Journal. "It's a great market for us, and we think it's going to be an important part of our expansion."
Toca took over the space in Central Park that was formerly home to Bladium Sports and Fitness Club. The facility is located at 2400 Central Park Blvd. and totals 83,000 square feet.
The Colorado Rapids Youth Soccer Club, which serves about 10,000 children across five youth soccer leagues in central Colorado, was a major draw for Toca to the Denver area. The company signed a partnership with the Colorado Rapids Youth Soccer Club on Aug. 16 to train 150 of their players every week.
Lewis sees such partnerships as a way forward for the company, which he said has the potential to impact the youth soccer market. The players who will train at the Denver site are members of the Rapids Central league, which serves Denver, Aurora, Commerce City, Glendale, Green Valley, Lakewood, Northfield, Stapleton and Wheat Ridge.
The other four Rapids leagues are located in and around Fort Collins, Castle Rock, South Denver and North Denver. The North Denver league incorporates Westminster, Broomfield, Arvada and Boulder. Getting closer to those other leagues is a goal for Toca, Lewis said.
"With the Rapids, they have five different regions, and the central region is really the only one that realistically has access to Toca," Lewis said. "We're really excited about the opportunity associated with it, so we want to do our best to be part of that community."
Toca uses proprietary technology to take players through repetitive, precision-training exercises. The company developed a small soccer ball that's about half of the standard size. A machine sends the balls out in different directions at varying speeds — a type of precision training that Lewis said was "highly influential" to his career.
When he was starting out in soccer, Lewis trained through a similar method, though with less sophisticated equipment. He began practicing with a tennis ball, which he would throw against a wall and receive with his feet. As he was nearing retirement, Lewis decided to share the idea with others.
"It really wasn't until I retired that I could kind of dedicate myself full time to try and bring what was a pretty strange concept to life," Lewis said.
Toca, which is based in Costa Mesa, Calif., had so far raised more than $91 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. In June, the company announced a "landmark" investment for an undisclosed amount from English National Team captain Harry Kane.
Toca's board is led by Erik Anderson, the former CEO of Topgolf, as well as Abby Wambach, who's a six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award and part of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
Lewis aims to eventually open 250 Toca sites across the country, with at least one in every state.
