New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series will be to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story.
Company: Pick6 Sports Solutions
CEO: Nick Lawson
Headquarters: Portland, Oregon
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Have you ever been watching a live pro game and know a player is going to go off for 20 points in the 4th quarter? How do you capitalize on this with the current fantasy options?
Player Pick, by Pick6 Sports, is a pick ‘em style fan game that allows fans to pick and change players live throughout the game. Points are awarded based on accurate picks. Fans then use points gained on team and sponsor rewards.
2. Problem & Solution
The problem is three-fold:
- Teams don’t leverage and brand their own fantasy experience. They rely on 3rd parties to build excitement around the content they provide. Why entrust your most valuable assets, your fans, to an experience you don’t control?
- For a fan, fantasy platforms don’t provide sufficient real-time engagement and feedback. Making picks and predictions stop when the most exciting part of sports begins, during the game. In an interactive world, why do we settle for passively watching while looking at stats, line-ups, and tweets during the game’s most engaging moments?
- Current fantasy offerings focus on betting, which brings a litany of potential regulation issues and also removes the family-friendliness of sports. Teams should be rewarding fan loyalty rather than incentivizing playing the odds.
Our solution allows teams to provide their fans with dynamic engagement that focuses them in on the game’s action while solving these problems. Fans have the ability to pick players throughout the game, changing at any point. Teams then use our rewards platform to reward fan loyalty and interaction in a family friendly but competitive way.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
We target pro teams in the 5 major sports leagues as well as FBS college teams.
Tier 1 – NBA, NHL, NFL, MLS, and MLB: 122 teams
Tier 2 – NCAA D1-A: 128 teams
Total potential market in US: 250 teams
Pick6 looks to reach the 56.8mil fantasy players in North America through team partnerships in order to capture a part of the $15.93bn per year sports sponsorship revenue.
Currently, we’ve partnered with three pro teams: The Portland Winterhawks (WHL), Seattle Storm (WNBA), and Charlotte Checkers (AHL).
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We build metrics around fan’s picks and teams leverage this data to make money from tickets, merchandise, and sponsorship sales on our rewards store. Pick6 charges teams and sponsors a Cost Per Redeem (CPR) for every reward redeemed by fans. We have a tiered pricing system that differentiates between merchandise, experiences, and sponsorship rewards.
5. Management Team
Nick Lawson- CEO & Co-Founder
Nick Lawson has been in sports marketing for the past 3 years, working with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Salem Sabres, and Pylon Elite Camps. While working in the sports industry, he earned an MBA from Willamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management, with a focus on marketing and entrepreneurship.
Before his MBA, Nick received an undergraduate degree from Willamette University in Art and Design where he also played NCAA football for the school. Nick started two companies, in apparel and sports tech, before starting Pick6.
Manuel Pineyro – CTO / Co-Founde
Manuel is a graduate of Columbia University in the City of New York. While an undergraduate he worked for both the Columbia Computer Graphics Group and the Columbia Business School Center on Global Brand Leadership. Out of his dorm room in NYC, he ran a successful event and concert promotions company.
Post-graduation he spent time in New York and London working on VivaStreet.com’s marketing and communications team as their technical producer for French and Mexican markets. During these years, his work appeared on ESPN and French media outlets.
Prior to joining Pick6, he held a position as an application engineer for Nike Consumer Digital Technology.
Lee Jorgensen- Product Manager / Co-Founder
Lee is a former Nike contract employee where he worked in accounting and product sample coordination. He graduated from Willamette University with a degree in international studies.
After his time at Nike, Lee graduated from Epicodus coding school in Portland, OR where he learned full stack development and worked creating web and mobile applications. Since graduating, he has worked at Energy GPS in Portland as a software developer.
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
We are three sports fans that are passionate about changing the way fans watch and engage with their favorite teams, players, and other fans.
If you are interested in hearing more contact Nick Lawson, nlawson@pick6fan.com
Bonus Question
If you could go to any sporting event, what would it be and why?
It would be tough to beat the atmosphere of the Army-Navy football game for the Commander-In-Chief trophy. A rivalry that has been going on since 1890 and features athletes that not only play football but go through the intensive training and education of each academy. When you think of college football you think Iron Bowl, The Game, and Army-Navy.