Laces

Democratising access to sports data

19 Jan

Data is fundamentally changing sports, from how talent is identified to how athletes are trained.

Most of the top sports leagues are using video footage to extract useful insights on different events, e.g. player possession. Processing videos to extract data can be time-consuming and expensive, making it limited to top-tier clubs.

It is increasingly cumbersome to get actionable insights as data analysts spend 3-4 hours manually coding a single football game, whilst external providers cost £100-200 per game.

In short, advancements in computer vision and increased adoption of video recordings in sports create the perfect conditions for a low cost tool.

Laces is a sports analytics platform, leveraging AI to extract insights from video footage at an affordable price

Automate - Reduce time to extract insights from 3-4 hours to a couple of minutes

Data - Build a detailed profile of all your players, providing superior data for future scouting opportunities

Engagement - Boost fan engagement through gamifying statistics and automating social media content generation

Founder

Eddy Eid, Co-Founder & CEO - Previously head of business development at OneFootball and consultant at BCG. MBA, Harvard Business School

Leonardo Aoun, Co-Founder & CTO - Previously machine learning engineer at Meta and applied science intern at Amazon. MSc Computer Science, EPFL

Spotlight Analysis

Strengths

  • Strong team: CTO has spent three years at Meta working on the Oculus team, whilst the CEO has experience at a unicorn sports tech startup

  • Industry tailwind: The use of data in sports is increasingly growing with each football game alone collecting 1.4 million data points

  • Long-term moat: Network effects will take charge as personalised profiles on athletes will form a scouting marketplace

Weaknesses

  • Target customer: Focusing on smaller clubs with limited budgets will slow down sales cycles

  • Market size: Whilst sports tech is on the rise, the initial market of coding video footage is nascent

Market

Hudl - Raised $120m of development capital led by Bain Capital Tech in May 2020

Veo - Raised $80m Series C led by ATP in June 2022

Why Laces?

Combination of the team’s deep technical expertise and focus on a largely underserved market positions them well to compete on quality and price

Key Details

Year founded: 2023

Summary: Laces is a sports analytics platform, leveraging AI to extract insights from video footage at an affordable price

Currently raising: Yes, raising $1.5m

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