Catch Corner brings ease of sports and recreation to Ottawa

Jonathan Azouri grew up enjoying playing sports and as he got older, he would often look for places to host pick up hockey matches with his friends, but without an aggregate database of where to find a rink, it made the planning process difficult.

“It was just crazy to say you can book a flight to go halfway across the world in a few clicks, but with something like sports and recreation, it was very back-dated from what I would say is the convenience standard in today’s world,” Azouri told CityNews in an interview.

He decided to take it under his wing to make finding a space seamless, a big gap for sports and recreation.

“A lot of different industries have aggregate products, products that pull a lot of different inventory all in one that make it really easy for someone to actually do something,” he said. “Like Opentable for restaurants, or Expedia for the tourism industry.”

That is what sparked the idea for Catch Corner, a one-stop shop for booking recreation spaces for a variety of sports and activities. Founded in Toronto in 2019, the platform has since been launched in 15 major cities across Canada and the United States, featuring over 1,000 venues. 

Its newest market is Ottawa. 

Ottawa’s “vibrant sports community” made it the next logical step for Catch Corner. 

“The diversity in the market makes it very interesting,” Azouri said. 

So far Catch Corner has partnerships with over 50 venues across the city, but that number is only expected to grow as the community gets acquainted with its services.

Azouri said he’s heard from users that it’s hard to imagine what life was like before such a service providing an ease of use. Because of this, he is always looking for ways to make Catch Corner better.

The program works with a wide variety of venues, some have multiple sports and recreation spaces available while others serve dual purposes, like schools. Azouri said they work closely with venues and provide a rigorous vetting process to ensure everything runs smoothly and professionally.

“A product like Airbnb, even though there is a vetting process, it’s still a customer to a customer, whereas here it’s really a business to a customer,” he said.

While Catch Corner is a business, it’s not set out just to make money. The service is free to use as Azouri believes that the mental and physical benefits of sports should not be capitalized on. There are also no hidden fees that wouldn’t be present if booking the space directly from the vendor.

“Actually, it’s quite the opposite,” he said. “We have an algorithm that also deals with different dynamic pricing. So for instance, if there’s more space at a specific time of day or something that is more last minute, then facilities could also opt in to that feature.”

The key for Azouri is just linking people with venues to ensure that no one who wants to participate is left out.

“It’s not necessarily to maximize on price point specifically,” he said. “But the biggest thing here for us as a company is to make sure that we maximize both the accessibility and also the use of a specific venue.”