To develop a more accessible tracking technology for soccer players, the founding team at DashTag experimented with several types of wearable hardware before choosing an option many amateurs already own: an Apple watch.
The free DashTag app, which will be released this fall, harnesses both the watch’s movement data and Apple’s augmented reality platform, ARKit, to record and provide a unique set of analytics for sub-elite level soccer players. For example, a player can not only learn his or her speed, but have that number converted into a video game rating for EA Sports’ FIFA series and also see an AR depiction of a sprint against players like Alex Morgan or Kylian Mbappé.
“The basic stats typically for a 16-year-old are still boring, and most often they are complicated,” said DashTag CEO Epco Berger. “It’s really about making less data more relevant.”
By “boring,” Berger means lacking either context or some kind of “emotional attachment.” Most teenagers under 16 in the U.S. and under 18 in Europe can’t yet drive and so may not have a frame of reference for miles per hour or kilometers per hour, the units many sports tracking devices use to convey speed. DashTag’s team used a formula that approximates what EA Sports uses to determine pace and acceleration.
“When we ask [youth players] what is your speed, they had no clue in terms of miles an hour, let alone your acceleration—miles an hour squared. But if we ask them what is the pace of Cristiano Ronaldo in the game, they all knew it’s 92,” Berger said, referring to Ronaldo’s FIFA 17 rating.
Berger is an aerospace engineer who previously managed a helicopter production line at Airbus and a factory line of LED lights for Philips electronics. Also a soccer enthusiast, he wanted to create a tool that would help non-professional players like himself.
DashTag, which was incorporated in 2015, collaborated with coaches from several organizations, including the youth academy and women’s team at PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands and a variety of soccer programs based in California. Non-elite coaches generally don’t have time for handing out GPS pods and harnesses, charging and syncing devices, and conducting data analysis for each player.
“The biggest learning we had when working with coaches is that they typically, on the non-professional level, don’t have a staff or data scientist or fitness coach,” Berger said. “It’s one coach typically coaching three teams every week, running from one to the other practice, and doing five games in a weekend. Long story short, they are very busy guys and girls. Literally what we learned is that time is the most precious thing for them.”
While the base app is free, DashTag has a premium version that will offer personalized coaching insights. Exercise and training drills can also be shared through the platform.
AR can be used to help players determine exactly where to set up cones as well as the more attention-grabbing feature of racing a soccer star. A user can record an iOS video of a sprint and then see a digitally rendered Mbappé added to the replay to show context.
“What normally would be a comparison in terms of FIFA stats or my 19 miles per hour versus Mbappé’s 26 miles an hour as a figure,” Berger said. “We can now actually show you running against your idol. You get your context, not just as a figure, but literally as AR.”
While DashTag is first being released only for the Apple watch, the plan is to launch on other smartwatches in the future. DashTag has been in public beta since September 2018 with about 250 monthly active users.
“Our mission is that we want to provide every single athlete the chance and guidance of setting their goals and tracking their performance against that goal, so we want to reach everyone,” Berger said. “We want to reduce barriers.”