Hey Sports Tech fans,
Congratulations to team USA who blew Europe away in the Ryder Cup last weekend.
It’s never nice to see such a one-sided result as it is always better for fans to see a match or tournament go down to the wire.
The Ryder Cup goes to Rome next in 2 years time, then to New York, and then to Ireland.
There is a great piece below in the Best of the Rest section about the technology implemented for the Ryder Cup. Golf and the Ryder Cup are steeped in traditions but the adoption and digitization of golf is truly remarkable.
Last week I attended SBC in Barcelona, a gambling conference. As faith would have it, there is a ton of gambling news this week.
I got the chance to meet with some great startups and the one I want to share with you this week is SofaScore.
SofaScore is a live scoring and statistics app and website that is a favorite of mine and of streamers who are doing watch-alongs or pre- or post-game shows.
SofaScore is based in Zagreb Croatia and has 20 million active users around the world. 45% of the traffic comes from Europe which is no surprise as they started with football/soccer leagues and they are growing rapidly in South America as more and more leagues are starting to provide real-time data and graphics.
Their match ratings for each player is always a touchy subject as it is always so hard to quantify a player’s input into the game into a rating out of 10.
Funnily enough, Neymar got a poor rating in one game that triggered a response from his sister.
High-profile players like Toni Kroos regularly Retweet SofaScore content as it is clear that players are also fans of SofaScore for their high-quality stats and interesting graphics like heat maps and of course those player ratings.
I had a great chat with Ema Gomercic SofaScore’s Brand & Content Manager.
If anyone would like an introduction to Ema or SofaScore, please let me know.
Two more startups to come covering computer vision and live betting.
Have a great sporting weekend,
Will
PS Revue (now a part of Twitter) are trialing some new designs for the newsletter. If you are one of those who gets the new design please let me know what you think and I share will share it with the Revue team.
