SciSports, a Enschede-based startup, has raised 1.35 million Euros from a group investors in the world of sports and IT. The startup, a spinoff from the University of Twente, helps professional football clubs to crunch football data into actionable insights. The startup will use the seed round money for international growth and further development of its main product BallJames.
BallJames converts a football match into a three-dimensional mesh that provides valuable insights. The company claims it can accurately determine the x,y,z-coordinates of the ball, the players and the referees. This data can be used to improve football clubs chances for success.
Giels Brouwer, founder and CEO of SciSports says that the challenge was to generate 3D football data of all 22 players and the ball. “You can compare our new technology with goal line technology or an MRI scanner that spans the entire pitch”, he explains in a press release. Adding: “Just imagine what this will mean in terms of refereeing the game or the potential of all this new data.”
For the development of the technology the startup partnered with the University of Twente’s chair of Biometric Pattern Recognition. A leading research institute in the field of face recognition and computer vision technologies.
Professional football clubs
The Dutch professional football clubs PSV, Vitesse and Heracles Almelo are cooperating with SciSports to further develop BallJames. The startup is also exploring options beyond the world of football. Brouwer: “Just imagine the potential for impact-analysis in American Football, crowd control at airports and the amazing applications in the media and entertainment industry.”