Sports video and data company Hudl recently signed a strategic partnership with Snap! Mobile to integrate Snap!’s fundraising tool into Hudl’s growing offering for amateur U.S. sports organizers.
The deal signals Hudl’s recognition of the evolving challenges—and opportunities—presented to grassroots organizations as more and more elements of the athlete and supporter experiences move online. Pro-level tech is increasingly becoming a must-have, putting a strain on budgets.
Founded in Lincoln, Neb., in 2006, Hudl has worked with more than 200,000 teams globally after building on early tools that helped coaches and athletes review and share game footage. The company received growth investment from Bain Capital in 2020 and last year expanded its product suite to include fan engagement features such as livestream passes and ticket sales.
As camera and tracking tech evolves, Hudl is planning for a day when school venues are fully connected, meaning stats and clips would be generated automatically, allowing the service to focus on next-level outputs from insights to entertainment. The company also serves pro teams around the world.
“We see 60 million unregistered fans come to Hudl every year to watch the content,” Hudl SVP and competitive business unit GM Greg Nelson said in an interview. “There’s so much more we can do around connecting them directly to the teams and athletes that they support.”
The growing tech demands of managing scholastic teams and staying connected with supporters has also brought finances into the equation. The youth sports industry grew by more than 50% to $19 billion from 2010 to 2017, hardly slowing since, and that money must come from somewhere. (For comparison, the NFL made just under $19 billion in 2022.)
“Budget concerns, financial hurdles and time constraints are overwhelmingly the biggest challenges to getting coaches and student-athletes what they need to win,” Snap! Mobile president Trevor Downs said in a statement.
Since 2014, Snap! Raise has helped more than 100,000 groups raise a combined total north of $800 million with custom campaigns. The Seattle based firm also provides money management, integrated communications and merchandise distribution tools.
“The success that we’ve had with Snap! allows these coaches to dream in a different way,” CEO Cole Morgan said in an interview. In particular, he said many coach and athletic director clients were already trying to raise money for tools like Hudl.
The partnership brings together behind-the-scenes support specialists who could help school administrators afford increasingly popular on-field analytics tools—and prepare for an even more technologically demanding future of amateur sports. Other nice-to-haves, like improved safety equipment, have also been the target of recent high school fundraising efforts.
For both companies, the ability to build databases of schools and athletes opens the door for all sorts of offerings as the lower-level sports infrastructure evolves in line with the direction the pros have gone.
Hudl execs have also begun thinking about how they could help individual athletes leverage their name, image and likeness rights directly in the future.
“The private markets are realizing the opportunity in this space, that’s for sure,” Morgan said. “And I think that this partnership and its success will only go to support [it].”
by Jacob Feldman
Original source: sportico.com
