New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series is to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company name: Colossi LLC
Founder(s): Ben Skaggs, Bryan Edelman
Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Colossi creates brandable, large scale, interactive crowd games for live events, like traditional sports games or eSports matches. Their proprietary crowd.game platform allows entire crowds to engage together by enabling them to use their phones as controllers for exciting, short session, massively multiplayer games played locally on a large second screen. In addition to the entertainment aspect, the platform also generates the opportunity for event hosts and sponsors to easily interact with, and keep track of, every single participant through the capture of their social media data.
2. Problem & Solution
In today’s world, most people (mainly the younger generation) almost expect interactivity and interaction in everything. They don’t want to just watch something, they want to DO something; this is why traditional in-arena sports advertising will often lose out to the smartphone, where people can be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. If they can’t interact with the content, or have some sort of ownable experience with it, their interest will quickly fade.
With our crowd gaming platform, instead of just passively looking at content, we give people the chance to actively engage in creating an experience around the content. We give them that interactive ownable experience they want, while still drawing on best aspects of being at a live sports venue with thousands of other people. We do this using their smartphones which 1) is a device people are already comfortable with 2) removes itself as a potential distraction to the content and 3) allows brands to track real-time participation, so it’s a win-win for everyone.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
The market opportunity is extensive. First, we have all the major sports teams with their big venues; in 2015, companies spent approximately $34 Billion on sports advertising. Another major opportunity comes from eSports, where ESPN predicts brands will have spent $325 million this year.
Beyond that, a report from the CMO council has indicated that digital advertising and video games were the fastest growing segments in marketing spending in the past few years, with digital marketing accounting for 75% of total spending. We fit nicely into all these categories, making it the perfect time for us.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We make money in a few different ways. 1) We license our patent-pending system. 2) We create the custom, branded content. 3) The social media data we collect. Currently we’re doing a SaaS type flat fee, but we’re exploring a rev-share model with event holders and their sponsors.
5. Management Team
Ben Skaggs – Co-Founder Brian Edelman – Co-Founder
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
With our backgrounds in interactive media and game design, we realize that the content needs to be enjoyable to get participants engaged. And we absolutely know how to build an experience around “fun”; everywhere we play, from the Los Angeles Sparks to the DreamHack Masters eSports Championship, the reactions from the crowd have been nothing short of fantastic.