Numbers.
Statistics.
Analytics.
Sports fans possess an obsession over numbers beyond the box score like never before. Stats represent the only quantifiable metric to justify any sports debate. When the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference grows in attendance each and every year, this event shows the breakthroughs and fascination within numerical research. Even ESPN has attempted to bring this interest to the mainstream with a show like Numbers Never Lie.
Still, for the stats junkie, there lacks a community to share this passion among like-minded people on a daily basis. Highly adopted platforms like Twitter and Instagram don’t cater specifically to the analytics movement. The most someone could do is receive push notifications from the plethora of apps out there. These updates are left personal to the user and not immediately sharable.
This trend doesn’t seem like it’ll vanish anytime soon. The universal connection of numbers touches people across the globe.
Accordingly, an Israeli startup called Numbeez aims to unify this contingent of fans. Yotam Aharonson, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, launched this app back in 2012 with three of his friends. They received initial funding through Navitrio, a digital investment firm, whom they’ve had a previous working relationship with. Navitrio’s other portfolio assets include cloud-based companies of Cloudyn and Pose. Together they envision to build a statistics environment that’s social, local, and mobile.
Aharonson mentioned to SportTechie that sports presents the most natural and obvious sector to begin to cultivate this platform. These users “live” stats all the time and sports easily channels performance comparison, including spanning through history.
“And what’s great about numbers is that they tell a story over time and it can be easily shown as a visual–in our generated infographics–so you can say a lot in a short and simple way,” continued Aharonson.
A single statistic already tends to project a powerful effect by itself. Numbeez tracks data–a lot of automatically funnelled stats–that users can set alerts when certain numbers reach pertinent marks, be it by individual player, team, or season. This app can be personalized to record numbers that a user wants; then users can just as easily share to Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, or text.
When a user opens the app, the main tabs on the top of the interface are news, boards, explore, and profile that don’t move during scrolling down. The boards aspect underscores the very essence of the app’s stats, which organizes and displays the content in a coherent way. The news part showcases who and what board the user follows. Each item highlights the particular number of interest, a relevant graphic, the options to love–equivalent to a favorite on Twitter or like on Instagram–set an alert to chart future repetitions, and share it externally.
Over time, any and all numbers chosen to be monitored will distill an infographic of it. Aharonson acknowledged that app’s UI and UX drew inspiration from Twitter and Pinterest; the former for the social format and the latter for its contextual layout.
Numbeez recently announced agreements with SportsData to tap into their API and Getty Images for game photos. These partnerships are important foundational elements for the entire app experience. SportsData enables users to explore and follow their favorite numbers across the licensed NBA and NFL spectrum, which are instantly updated daily and by the season. Getty Images provides a nice touch with an image juxtaposed next to the stat; plenty social media users are inclined towards visuals, while it’s extremely difficult to obtain such photos without Getty Images’ cooperation.
With those integrated features in place, Aharonson elaborated on the plan to increase the app’s user base:
“Numbeez is all about experience and content. We are working hard on recruiting interesting sports bloggers, on top of the basic stats that are already available in Numbeez, interesting and unique content. As the community evolves and grows, we are sure Numbeez will attract more and more bloggers that will leverage Numbeez to create a community around a certain area (player, team) and make it easier for their fans to engage.”
It’s worth noting that prominent sports apps, like ESPN’s SportsCenter App and Twitter, of course, function as second-screen live interactions. These kind of apps attempt to add to the game at hand and sometimes even replace by how consumed a user is. Numbeez isn’t looking to replace those or compete in the same user atmosphere between the game and how the app should be used.
Rather, the interplay likens to what Rivalry Games is doing as a startup in the fantasy sports space. Aharonson emphasized that this is a “user-initiated platform not just user-generated.” The interlinked posts also provides context that most mainstream sports apps lack; a tool called “track it” that’s in beta is being designed to resemble Pinterest’s pin it button.
In terms of monetization, Numbeez takes quite a different approach from what’s commonplace among apps. Their primary business model predicates on a brand and content marketing. They believe that brands and agencies will be able to promote unique content to their respective followers within the app. In this vein, there should be a greater, organic relationship between these parties compared to banner ad or sponsored post.
“Since Numbeez is based on tracking over time, this will be a great platform for advertisers to push target content, create a community around it, and engage with their followers over a longer period of time,” said Aharonson.
Numbers continue to be an integral part of any sports fans’ life. Niche networks could potentially craft their own strong communities this year. Nate Silver’s much-publicized arrival to ESPN will debut his FiveThirtyEight.com website soon. Numbeez, currently available for free to download on iOS, may have met the perfect storm to capture this ongoing phenomenon.