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. Feel free to contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company: Sploops
CEOs: Paul Rosa and Sean Roth
Headquarters: Wyomissing, PA
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Sploops is a video sports forum for mobile. It allows fans of all teams to voice their sports take through 15-second video rants, interactive polling, and social sharing. Text-based sports forums are boring and outdated. Twitter and Facebook are crowded with other types of content. The way fans consume sports has evolved over the years, yet sports conversation platforms have remained stagnant. We’re tired of emotionless paragraphs of texts and emojis. Sploops puts a voice, face and emotion back into all of your sports opinions.
2. Problem & Solution
Sports fans are inherently opinionated and undoubtedly one of the most passionate groups of people but there hasn’t been a platform created to provide fans a place to release their thoughts, talk trash, and create a brand for themselves in the sports community. At the same time, fan engagement within stadiums is also evolving and teams are in dire need of a solution to capitalize on mobile usage at sporting events. People aren’t putting their phones away whether they’re on the couch or in the stands watching a game so why not leverage mobile as another point of contact?
Sploops provides users the ability to rant about big plays, take sides on controversial topics, trash talk with their fantasy sports league and engage with other fans on one centralized platform. Not only can users take 15-second videos, they can also get crowd sourced answers using interactive polling to pose an MVP debate or decide what running back to play in their fantasy matchup. Not only is all of our content sharable on social media, but Sploops has a built in API which allows for bars, stadiums and other content publishers to screen and display content on TVs, websites, team apps and jumbotrons.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Sploops’ target markets are die-hard sports fans and fantasy sports players. But overall the app’s ease of use allows even the casual sports fan to interact and be entertained.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Currently we are in the stage of driving user base growth. The value of our app increases exponentially for every user we acquire which is why we will put a hold on monetization at first. Long term though, we have several opportunities both at a consumer and business-to-business level. We will eventually release “in app” purchase opportunities allowing users to pay for features such as longer rant time, private fantasy league tabs, etc. With sports being a highly segmented industry, we will also be constantly collecting valuable backend data in real time.
On the B2B side there are many partnership opportunities with sports teams and stadiums. In-stadium fan engagement is an incredibly hot topic that is very mobile driven. Stadiums can run our live polls on jumbotrons, allowing fans to interact live with the app and team. Using our API, teams can easily integrate our video content within their already built team specific apps. Additionally, there are chances to send push notifications via geo-location to provide fans within the stadium offers through the app to purchase merchandise at the in-stadium team stores and vendors. Similar environments can be set up on TV screens at local sports bars, Buffalo Wild Wings, and other venues where sports content is consumed.
5. Management Team
Paul Rosa – Co Founder
Sean Roth – Co Founder
Terry Zeigler – Advisor
Dave Powell – Research & Account Management
Cory Bishop – Design & App Strategy
George McGowan – Legal Counsel
Doug Iafrate – Accounting & Finance
Bonus Question: If you could go to any sporting event, what would it be and why?
Sean – There’s only one right answer to this question. The World Cup. It’s the greatest sporting event in sports. Argument over.
Paul- I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to go to multiple World Series games, NFL games, NBA Games, NASCAR races, etc. However, I have never had the chance to go to a professional tennis match. I would love to watch a Wimbledon or US Open Final. Hopefully with Roger Federer playing in it!