The sports industry is – and looks set to remain – a lucrative market for startups. The total value of the sports industry is expected to reach $73.5 billion by 2019, and the rise in popularity of sports-based video games and eSports has stimulated the technological side of the market.
eSports alone is expected to be worth $3 billion by 2020, and everyone from F1 to the Premier League has jumped on the digital sporting competition bandwagon.
The downside to the sports industry, and its current tech renaissance, representing such an attractive market to tech startups is that the number of products now coming on to the market makes it difficult to differentiate your product from the thousands of others already out there.
Standard marketing strategies for startups can only go so far to remedy this situation. The reality is that, unless sports-tech startups change their point of view, the market will boil down to increasing similar products competing with each other by using the same outdated strategies as their competition.
The only clear way to stand out in an increasingly crowded market is to identify and exploit new revenue sources.
Playing on a Different Field
Rather than attempting to differentiate their product through price changes or feature optimization, new sports-tech startups should be looking to tap into new markets.
Apps like Field Level and GameChanger are excellent examples of companies assessing the market and then providing a service to overlooked users.
FieldLevel is a social media app that connects high school athletes and their coaches with college teams during the recruiting process. This app is now used by more than 10,000 sports teams across the US and has connected many high-level college teams with up and coming talent.
Clemson University is known to have recruited talented players through the app, and Oddschecker currently has them listed as favourites to win the CFP National Championship, so the app must be doing something right.
GameChanger is an app-based platform that provides the same service that other sporting apps do, such as scorekeeping, stats, live streaming of games, and game recaps, but to amateur baseball and softball teams.
The amateur sports team market is often overlooked because of the perception that it doesn’t have the financial resources of the professional game. However, GameChanger is now being used by over 200,000 youth sports teams across, and was recently acquired by DICK’S Sporting Goods for a rumoured $6.8 million.
Both FieldLevel and GameChanger were able to find success by abandoning traditional marketing strategies, focusing instead on underserved sections of the market – an example that other sports-tech startups should look to follow.
