Overview

Bantr is a US-based sports-tech startup helping casual soccer players organize and engage around their games across 15+ cities in the United States.

The platform started as a web-first product, but its players needed a faster, more reliable mobile experience built around how casual sports actually happen: on the field, between games, and on the go.

I contributed to the launch and evolution of Bantr's iOS and Android apps, helping turn the product into a mobile-first experience for players across the country.

The Challenge

Bantr was growing beyond its early community in Knoxville and expanding into 15+ cities across the United States through partnerships with local soccer organizers and leagues.

The product needed to support that growth with a mobile experience that could scale across different cities, player communities, and match formats, while still feeling simple enough for casual players to use before, during, and after a game.

The app needed to:

• Support players and organizers across multiple US cities
• Make it easier to join, organize, and follow casual soccer matches
• Bring game-day activity into a native mobile experience
• Create a flexible foundation for new league and organizer partnerships
• Ship reliably on both iOS and Android as the product expanded

The Solution

We built a dedicated mobile experience with React Native and Expo, giving Bantr a single codebase for iOS and Android while keeping the product fast enough to iterate with a growing startup.

The app brought Bantr's core soccer workflows into a native mobile experience: players could discover games, participate in match activity, and stay connected with their local soccer communities from their phones.

I also proposed mobile-first UX improvements over the existing web flows, simplifying key interactions for players using the app before, during, and after games.

I worked on the mobile app architecture and product delivery, helping turn Bantr from a web-first platform into a scalable mobile product that could support players, organizers, and new city launches across the United States.

Key Features

Core mobile features included:

• Pickups for organizing casual soccer matches
• Match statistics and game-day activity
• MVP voting and player engagement flows
• Realtime communication with Socket.IO
• Mobile-first UX improvements over the original web flows

Technical Highlights

Server state was handled with TanStack Query, including optimistic updates for key game-day interactions so the app could feel fast and responsive while syncing with the backend.

Local UI state relied on React's built-in context and hooks, avoiding Redux overhead for an app of this scope.

The result was a fast, maintainable mobile codebase that supported rapid product iteration, smoother mobile interactions, and reliable releases as Bantr expanded into new cities.

Mobile Architecture

Bantr Mobile is a React Native / Expo app using a modular feature-based architecture. It separates screens, shared components, hooks, API queries, services, and models into dedicated layers.

Global concerns are composed through providers, including React Query for server state, a typed tRPC API client, context providers, Socket.IO realtime communication, and React Navigation for app flows.