Introducing ScorePlay

And we're live.

Xav wrote the first line of code for ScorePlay on January 4th 2021.

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It's been a wild 6 months since then. We didn't know where, what, who we would go on to be today. But, writing this from our office in Lisbon, it is fulfilment, pride, gratitude, and, above all, anticipation that we feel.

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Fulfilment because, step by step, slowly but surely, we're on our way to realising our vision of revolutionising how sports institutions manage and interact with their media. Pride because we built a platform, from the ground up, that makes our clients' lives much easier. Gratitude because we really owe everything to our partners. Everyone says so, but it's true - we wouldn't be here without the early adopters that dug deep during the tough times, that accepted our mistakes, that believed in the ScorePlay project and made it what it is today. So, @all clubs in the beta - thank you.

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In 6 months, we've moved to a new city, built the tech, set up the team, cold-called, shook hands, failed, iterated, and more. We've had to move fast, and it hasn't always been smooth sailing. But when in doubt, we always came back to our thesis, to the pain point we're targeting...

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Managing media sucks. We'll do it for you.

During matches, training, player presentations, or corporate events, pictures are taken to share the moment with the world. Lots and lots of pictures are taken. They're then sent to the marketing team by photographers, usually via a chunky Dropbox or Google Drive folder or - even worse - a WeTransfer link that expires in 48 hours. There's no naming or categorization. Players will then ask for specific pictures to post on their Instagram, and soon after sponsors request a specific snapshot for their website. The marketing team now has to sift through 700 photos and videos, in no particular order, to find and share individual pictures. That sucks.

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If a player is transferred to another club, the marketing team will want to share his best moments on social media. They may want a picture of his first game, or a video of his last goal. That guy from marketing has to go through years, and years, and years of (probably poorly) archived footage. It boils down to this: clubs are wasting an incredible amount of time collecting photos, sorting them, sharing them...manually..

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ScorePlay brings order to that chaos. Photographers upload their files to the platform. Our Artificial Intelligence automatically tags and classifies the media. Players can find pictures of them through a mobile app and share them directly on their social media accounts, whilst sponsors can access dedicated libraries of curated content. All of that is done is automatically, in case we didn't stress that enough already. Partners can now even monitor and share valuable insights on the performance of club content through our new Analytics portal (stay posted for more info coming soon).

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You get the point - we want to make finding the perfect content easy and intuitive.

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Built for clubs, with clubs.

In the early days of ScorePlay, iteration was key. We were fortunate enough to be trusted and guided first by FC Toulouse, and then by 9 other clubs from 9 different countries. Throughout the private beta, each club took time to share their feedback and needs, allowing us to progressively improve the platform. The result of that process is an end-product that is essentially designed directly with clubs.

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After closing the beta a month ago and as we enter a new phase in our development, we remain deeply rooted in collaborating with clubs.

"The ScorePlay platform responds perfectly to our content management challenges, and its adoption and integration into our workflows were surprisingly fast".
Juan Iraola, Chief Innovation Officer at Real Sociedad

Here lies the fruit of months of hard work.

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We think this is what makes ScorePlay different - we give clubs what they actually need, not what we think they need. We don't push our assumptions: we listen, refine and repeat.

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We have goals and we're kicking on, to Europe, Latin America...and beyond!

Back to anticipation. We expect big things from the next 6 months, and we're excited to keep the momentum going. Since January 2021 and that first line of code, we've successfully onboarded 10 clubs from top leagues in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Australia, Chile, the USA. They tested our private beta and as of today, 80% of them converted to full-time, paying customers. We'll eventually move into other sports, but for now, we're ready to go global. ScorePlay is expanding to keep the pace, from implementing new features to assuring the highest quality customer service. Having just closed our pre-seed funding, we're going full throttle.

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Our current focus is on making content management painless, but we see so much room for optimisation in the sports media space. That includes making club content licensing more fair and equitable, but it also means monetising a media asset's entire life-cycle, potentially through sale on marketplaces or even in the form of NFTs. This is all part of our goal of unlocking the true potential of clubs' media assets.

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That's long term, we're digressing. In the immediate, it's all about streamlining inefficient processes, building the best product possible, curing that initial pain point. Clubs have better things to do than searching for pictures in messy Google Drive folders. Helping big clubs leverage their brand, empowering smaller clubs to build theirs - that's where we want to be.

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There you have it. We're so pumped to share the big news with you and couldn't be more excited to push forward. It's just getting started.

Stay tuned.

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The ScorePlay Team