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 contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company name: RefLIVE
CEO: Simon Murphy
Headquarters: Melbourne, Australia
1. What is your elevator pitch?
RefLIVE is focused on digitising the match day administration process for soccer referees. The current process of manually recording details on paper and calculating the time and reason for cautions is completely outdated, slow and inaccurate. Our app for smartwatches and smartphones will greatly improve the efficiency for pre-match, in game and post-match administration tasks required to be completed by referees. We plan to make paper team sheets a thing of the past and are confident in our user friendly and easy to use product designed for referees of all levels, ages and technology competencies.
2. Problem & Solution
Problem:
Soccer match details are still recorded by referees with a pen and paper! The referee is required to track the time of a match and complete the details goals, yellow and red cards and substitutions as required. The post-game administration process involves referees completing team sheets and often mailing them to governing bodies. It’s generally a poor process that can drastically be improved.
Solution:
Enter match pre-match information on a smartphone including teams, players, half length, location, foul codes and whether or not to record substitutions.
Record match in-game details, goals, cards and substitutions with a smart watch.
Sync the in-game details to edit, finalise and submit post-match from a smartphone.
Simple. Intuitive. Efficient.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Obviously soccer referees are our initial primary target as a consumer and being the world game there is a global marketplace for us. However, we are looking to transition into the digital administration of in game match details for the management of leagues. Creating a platform where referee’s simply upload the players directly from teams, referee the game with RefLIVE and submit the match details back to the teams, the league and the media to simplify and speed up the administration process while making the role more efficient for referees.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We are looking to subscribe leagues to our premium service that can integrate with the digital administration platforms they are using or looking to implement. Our technology has been developed to be accurate enough to reduce administrative errors and time spent recording details so referees and officials can focus on officiating matches. The improvement in recording of details from a speed and accuracy perspective is a huge value add that we offer.
5. Management Team – with titles
Founder/CEO – Simon Murphy
Development Executive – Ken Chin
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
If you’re the type of referee who is always saying “I’m not good with technology!” then you need not worry. The intuitiveness of RefLIVE mean that we’re supremely confident any referee could start using our smartwatch app without instruction and be fully competent within 5 minutes. Our free app is currently available for download for iPhones and Apple Watches. Our dream for RefLIVE is for our technology to be used in the World Cup.