PlaySight, the cloud-based video and analytics platform used by professional teams and athletes for training, has raised $21 million in a Series C funding round that includes investment from SoftBank, the Japanese giant that has been building a diverse portfolio of tech startups.
SoftBank, through its $100 billion Vision Fund that it established in 2016 with a Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund and a $1 billion contribution from Apple, has invested in a range of different companies across a spectrum of industries, including WeWork, Slack and online sports apparel retailer Fanatics.
The company’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, has positioned SoftBank as a holding company focused on startups that are already leaders, or on their way to becoming leaders, in their respective fields. While the investment SoftBank contributed to PlaySight’s $21 million funding round is small compared with the $1 billion it invested last year in Fanatics, its interest nevertheless signals a perspective from SoftBank that PlaySight is a leader in video training and smart courts.
“PlaySight’s vision is to become the technology platform of choice used by the mass market of youth, amateur and professional sports,” Jay Choi, a senior associate of SoftBank Ventures Korea, said in a statement. “It is only a matter of time before all competitive sports will adopt video and connectivity solutions in their courts and arenas, and PlaySight offers the highest performance solution and innovative business models to suit customers of all types.”
With its infrastructure permanently installed at training facilities or on courts and fields, Israel-based PlaySight offers automatic filming from multiple-angle camera views and instant replay services, which enable coaches to go over an athlete’s performance during practice or games. It also provides data on certain performance metrics, such as a tennis player’s serve speed or an analysis of strokes.
The company wants to turn its product into an all-in-one training and scouting platform. Coaches and scouts can livestream and record performance, leave in-app voice messages, drawings and notes to communicate their thoughts with players, and connect third-party tracking devices such as Catapult wearables to add a layer of data and context to video streams.
Its technology is currently utilized in more than 20 countries across 25 sports, including tennis, golf, basketball, soccer and football. The company counts the Golden State Warriors, the U.S. Tennis Association and dozens of colleges among its list of clients.
PlaySight CEO Chen Shachar says the company’s data-infused video streams might also eventually be repackaged to enhance fan engagement and broadcasts.
“SoftBank Ventures Korea believes in our vision for bringing technology to all areas of sports,” said Shachar. “We’re focused on the athlete, but along the way we have created a platform that is providing tremendous value to teams, leagues, friends, family, fans and more. We’re rapidly connecting the entire sports ecosystem, whether it is through athletic improvement, automated content production, video assistant refereeing, or by simply making the experience more fun, challenging and engaging.”
The company says it plans to use the new funding, which also includes investment from CE Ventures, an Israeli venture fund backed by Chinese peer-to-peer lending company CreditEase, to continue its expansion into new sports and to extend its platform deeper into existing verticals.
SportTechie Takeaway
Joining the ranks of companies with backing from SoftBank through its Vision Fund, PlaySight joins a fleet of top-tier businesses, many also with technologies focused on artificial intelligence, that operate in a highly cooperative environment.
SoftBank encourages its portfolio companies to work together to find synergies, such as when SoftBank portfolio companies Uber and Sprint teamed up in a joint campaign to reward consumers with Uber credits when they switched their mobile service to Sprint. Earlier this year, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure took one of SoftBank’s two slots on Uber’s board of directors.
PlaySight might now be able to use this extensive SoftBank network to increase its expansion into new sports, geographies and cloud-based technologies.