This year, FinalRep turned five years old. In this article, we would like to give you a brief summary of the history of the FinalRep project so far. We would like to take this as an opportunity to celebrate together with you. We hope you enjoy reading! 🧡
The 5-year FinalRep timeline in a nuthsell
2020: the foundation and first FinalRep event
In 2019 the idea of FinalRep was born by Tonio Zeidler right after his first Streetlifting competition in Dessau (Germany). This event sparked a fire within him, which led to the founding of FinalRep a few months later, in August 2020. He used this time to get everything in place for the first event a few weeks later. The logo, the team, the venue, the media team and the sponsors (namely GORNATION and Barzflex) – and it worked! Right before the second COVID-Lockdown in Germany, the First FinalRep took place in the RheinGym in Cologne in October 2020.
Despite all the challenges in organization, the vibe created at this event was just amazing. Thanks to our livestream and the Instagram content created at this event, our project got spread worldwide!
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2021: The Test of „FinalRep Endurance“
When founded, the vision of FinalRep was to raise the Streetlifting and Endurance competition sport. After our first successful Streetlifting event (in 2020 still named „Weighted Calisthenics“), we started our first FinalRep Endurance competition in 2021 at the collage sport campus in Jena.
From our perspective, this event was a big success and created demand for future Endurance competitions. But we have stopped this project due to changes in the FinalRep team. Finally, this was a good decision because it gave more space to fully focus on developing Streetlifting as a worldwide competition sport.
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2022: The first World Championship
After the first event in 2020, the name „FinalRep“ reached a worldwide attention in the niche sport scene of Streetlifting. The hype that got created through the pictures and videos created at the first event, were used to promote the next step: a World Championship. Thanks to a collaboration with the Golds Gym Performance Center in Berlin, we got a very suitable location for an international event. The organization was still on the edge from being a „hobby project“ towards „this is a real thing“.
This event has attracted athletes from 12 countries. The roaster was challenging and some of the records set on that event still remain unbeaten. But this WORLDS 22 was just the beginning…
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2023: WORLDS 2023
The third year came with a worldwide expansion of FinalRep. The main goal for this year was to level-up the World Championship with a more suitable location, a better media presentation and a much stronger roaster of athletes. We also got the first requests from organizations outside of Germany to become FinalRep partners.
After all, the WORLDS 23 was a huge success. We have attracted athletes from 20 countries and reached over 80.000 views on our YouTube Livestream. The quality of the event setup was first on a level to be called „professional“, even if there were dozens of problems and mistakes that we have encountered before, during and after the event. A big thanks goes to Rising Productions who accompanied this event with an outstanding performance.
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2024: the first international Season
After the incredible WORLDS 23 we were sure that we are on the right track. Now we were ready for the next steps. First, we have decided to expand FinalRep by entering collaborations with partners in other countries to build an international competitions network. Second, we went further to have a 2-year competition cycle of world and continental championships. Third, we introduced our own doping-test system to the sport. And fourth, we scaled up our events by hosting them in sport arenas instead of gyms. The last one was only possible by the outstanding commitment from Supreme Force and Strengthshop who believed in the idea and provided us with a great amount of support.
All this together brought a massive increase in responsibility and work load to us as an organization and as a team. Finally, we achieved all goals that we have set. We have ended this year with concluding a lot new partnerships for the upcoming 2025 season.
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2025: a worldwide competition Season
The year 2025 became a great completion of our first 5 years. We have started with the announcement of a worldwide competition season: 16 competitions in 14 countries across 4 continents. We have introduced a Judging License to raise the standards of judging worldwide and we finally established our FinalRep app as an integral part of the sport’s digitalization.
Besides the outer achievements that we have realized, the biggest achievement that we have made this season, is the expansion of our team. Within one year from EUROS 24 to WORLDS 25 we have onboarded over 10 people with an international background who are now in charge of several parts of the FinalRep business: social media management, content creation, event management, sponsorship and more.
The WORLDS 25 finally came up with a high expectation we have never experienced before. This included a lot of critics towards several aspects of our event. Throughout this process we realized that we are now at a turning point for our organization. The responsibility has shifted from organizing events to creating a worldwide sport structure and fundamental education to make the sport grow. This also includes the creation of a new governance structure, which we will address in later posts.
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Review of our goals and expectations
Now with the reflection of this article we can see more clearly the achievements that we have made in the past 5 years:
1) Unifying rulebook
We have establishing a unifying rulebook for the competition sport worldwide. We have started with 8 pages in 2020 and have now reached 40 pages version of our rulebook.
2) Uniting the worldwide community
With „FinalRep“ we have created a competition platform and brand that unites the Streetlifting Sport worldwide. The logo, the name, the vibe and the vision are now know to everyone who follows the sport. We are not only forming a sport technically, but culturally. -> 2025 Recap Blog
3) Creating a market for Streetlifting
Both the unifying rules and the uniting culture have created a new sport market. Streetlifting has outgrown its early position of being a sub niche of Calisthenics and Powerlifting. In the past 3 years we have seen more and more brands emerging out of the sport – like King of Weighted and MPDS – as well as established sport brands like Strengthshop positioning themselves as manufacturers of Streetlifting equipment.
3 Years of digitalization – the FinalRep App
One last and very essential achievement that we have, is the creation of the FinalRep App. With the FinalRep app we have established a digital platform for Streetlifting sport competitions worldwide. This software enabled us not only to become more efficient every event, but also to accumulate the efforts of Streetlifting worldwide.
The vision of this project was born in 2022 when Carsten Seeger, a highly experienced and skilled software developer joined FinalRep. From the beginning he had the vision to create a software platform that changes the way we see sport competitions.
The FinalRep app was the leading tool that enabled us to transfer our knowledge and structure of event organization to hosts worldwide. We have digitalized the event creation, registration, payment, flight setup, judging and result management. We have included live views and livestream overlays and made them accessible to all organizers worldwide.
By today we have 8.400 app users and more than 100 events were created on this platform.🚀
Summary of 5 years
All this being said, we can look back at an intense 5-year journey. The goals that we have set when we have started this project seemed very ambitious and we really had no idea if this is gonna work. And even if the story being told in this article sounds like a success story, we also had to deal with a lot of setbacks and disappointments that made us question this project.
What brought us back on track again and again was the gratitude and the excitement that reached us from all over the world for the work that we do.
After all, we would like to say thank you! Thank you to all athletes who competed at FinalRep. Thank you to all team members: judges, spotters and now a lovely team to volunteers worldwide. Thank you to all sponsors that believed in us at a time where we only had a few arguments and a dream to sell.
Now the first chapter of FinalRep is completed. Stay tuned what follows next.
Let’s create the future of this sport together!
— Your FinalRep Team 🧡
