The youth sports aggregation space is the Holy Grail to marketers. As media companies continue to home better ways to engage high school sports and the walls for brand alignment come down, youth sports, at the most grassroots level, remains largely disjointed and extremely hyper local. While groups like Little League and Pop Warner provide access to good numbers and have a great overlay of services, trying to find a way to engage thousands across state lines in a host sports, especially when dealing with leadership that is very transient and usually gone when their child moves on or out of organized sports, is very very tricky. What may work with one engaged group in the south may not work in an inner city program, and trying to rally all those numbers can be like herding cats.
Enter into the vast challenge My Team Sphere, a diverse, growing aggregation tool with amazing optics and a simple system that is going to try and change the system, and unify the disconnected world of youth sports for the betterment of all. It’s features are easy to use and adapt, and it touches on many areas that parents, coaches, families and perhaps even brands may enjoy; from picture and file sharing to statistics and schedules.
Will it be the game changer for youth sports? We asked founder Medo Eldin why he thinks the world will change with his new spherical platform.
Few if any platforms have been able to effectively aggregate or monetize youth sports. Why would this be different?
My Team Sphere has several state-of-the-art components that allow it to aggregate and monetize youth sports and distinguish it from all other platforms. However, before focusing on these factors, it’s important to highlight the reason that companies have tried to aggregate youth sports: The potential is enormous. In aggregate, we’re talking about a sizable portion of Facebook’s US user base. And because the youth sports audience is composed of families in their prime spending years, there’s an enormous economic opportunity associated with an industry-wide youth sports platform.
So, why will My Team Sphere succeed where others have failed? It comes down to the fact that our platform achieves an alignment that meets the needs of all parties in the youth sports value chain – and this is very difficult to achieve.
If you look at youth sports from an organizational standpoint, it’s exceedingly complex in terms of the number of stakeholders involved and the breadth of their interests. Players want to have fun, parents want to support their kids while minimizing their stress and expenditures, coaches just want to coach, team moms/dads want to manage logistics and maintain safety, leagues want to administer the season while minimizing costs and hopefully generating revenues, and companies want to generate an ROI from their sponsorship. The difficulty in simultaneously meeting all of these diverse objectives is akin to serving an enterprise environment, so it’s no wonder that others have failed. Any omission in the value chain preempts platform success. To further complicate the situation, any effort must be a mobile-first architecture, since cell phones are the go-to interface when it comes to parents on the go.
My Team Sphere will succeed in aggregating and monetizing youth sports because it was built from the ground up to serve all stakeholders in the youth sports value chain. Everything from our technology to our business model is in sync with the dynamics of youth sports. Simply put, we give everyone a reason to say yes, and we can deliver.
How has adaptation gone so far?
We’re in the early phases of launching the platform, so our adoption metrics are limited. Having said that, our team engagement metrics from our public beta are literally off the charts. In reviewing usage, we found some teams with more than 1000 photo and video submissions over the course of the season, but perhaps most notably, we observed highly significant network effects within our 3D sphere social network. The following graph depicts daily active users across five teams. As is clearly evident, initial use of the platform led to increased usage, which is another way of saying that platform value grew as more people used it.
Who are your partners now and what are your projections in year one?
Without going into specifics regarding competitive considerations, I can say that within the past week, I’ve had very positive communications with a regional soccer equipment provider, a Fundraising Director of a large little league, and a trophy company. All of these discussions are progressing to the next level. In addition, a national mortgage company has committed to sponsoring a very large league.
What is the value proposition for brands who might engage?
People are intensely passionate about their sports teams and companies spend millions each year sponsoring sports at all levels. It is hard to question the benefits of aligning with youth sports, or sports in general. The challenge with youth sports thus far is having enough scale to deliver engagement efficiently and effectively. Once this can be accomplished, companies will benefit by being able to engage with what is a viscerally passionate demographic. My Team Sphere can deliver this brand activation because our social approach unlocks the community dimension of youth sports, which is something that has never been achieved before. Put simply, our metrics show that families live in My Team Sphere once they get on the platform.
The optics are pretty cool, but how does that translate into engagement?
Our engagement metrics indicate that we’ve succeeded in creating a youth sports environment which users love. Our 3D sphere interface is a big part of that because it’s both useful and entertaining.
From a utility standpoint, displaying photos and videos around a 3D sphere gives the user a high-level overview of the album contents so they have a sense of what’s inside. It also better represents the idea of an album, which in the physical world is an object. In other words, form follows function. From an entertainment perspective, the 3D sphere perfectly represents the experience of youth sports – youthful, fun, and kinetic. And of course, let’s not forget that it looks like a ball! So I think when you combine communication utility with a novel social experience you get amazing branding and ultimately that’s why I think My Team Sphere is so engaging.
Youth sports is local, how do you propose to conquer locality for adoption?
Locality is the friend of My Team Sphere because youth sports organizations and teams are continuously cross-pollinating. For example, last November I attended a meeting of League Presidents. It was a wide-ranging meeting where they discussed challenges and solutions. I believe that once organizations start hearing about a new platform that can help them organize AND generate new revenue, it won’t be long until we’re experiencing rapid viral adoption.
How quickly have you, or will you see conversion from what is currently being used to your platform?
The platform can be adopted at the team level or at the league level, so they will be simultaneously following different adoption curves.
Team-level adoption will happen very quickly because it is governed by a manager or coach who is looking to solve the communication problem. And because they can use My Team Sphere independently or in conjunction with their league-level offering, we’re seeing conversion already.
Because leagues are made up of several decision makers, I expect league-level conversion to follow the Innovation of Diffusion curve described in Crossing the Chasm. We’ll see the Innovators and Early Adopters in year 1, the Early Majority in years 2, followed by the Late Majority and Laggards in years 3-4.
Why would a youth sports director switch from what they are currently using if it works for them?
Leagues are made up of Boards who regularly contend with the financial constraints of the organization and who could impose a decision if there’s a clear economic benefit. They’re thinking, My Team Sphere is a superior management/communication product AND brings in revenue to the league, which makes our job easier and parents happier. Obviously scenarios will vary from league to league, but I think ultimately economics will win out in most situations over time.
My Team Sphere is a more complete and effective solution for them that will save time and money while increasing productivity. In a nutshell, it is better than anything out there and is just at the beginning. I think everyone is beginning to recognize the perks of technology and how it is making our lives easier, applying that to the Youth Sports world is a logical next step and hasn’t been done yet. What they’re using isn’t enough. It is a NYC taxi stuck in the 80s while we’re Uber.
Who owns the data that you are collecting and how often would you share the data with brands who may want to engage with that audience?
This is a great question because information privacy is very important to us. The My Team Sphere sponsor server is designed like a self-service Google Adwords system, so there is nothing to compel us to share information – nor would we do so. Brands identify their desired market, methods of engagement, and message duration, and then the system publishes the campaign. Having said that, brands can implement surveys or opt-in style campaigns where end-users may choose to submit their information. Finally, the My Team Sphere sponsor server includes an analytics module which allows brands to monitor and optimize their campaigns over time.
What is the revenue stream that you see that is different from what has been tried at in the past?
Last week I attended a youth baseball league meeting in which the league’s Sponsor Director got up and told the team parents that each one of them is responsible for bringing in a $500 sponsor. This was followed by an Administrator telling them that they’re responsible snack-stand duty, but that they could hire high school kids to do the work. The reality is that the costs of youth sports are a serious pain point that is increasing every year. My Team Sphere alleviates this pain point by providing leagues and teams with an entirely new revenue stream that sponsors love. Now, instead of telling companies that their sponsorship is tax-deductible because the sports organizations are 501c3 entities, the entire proposition can be looked at from the standpoint of a return on investment. In terms of how the financial component works, My Team Sphere is free for leagues and teams to use as a management and communication platform. When My Team Sphere places a sponsor, the sports organization gets 20%. If the league or team places a sponsor, My Team Sphere gets 20%. With this approach, there’s alignment of financial interests up and down the value chain.
Are there adaptions of the platform beyond youth sports?
First off, let me just say that we’re 100% focused on winning in youth sports. I know this sounds like a cliché, but the fact is every minute we spend thinking about other things that it could be is a minute we don’t spend on identifying and implementing strategies to take My Team Sphere to increasingly higher levels.
Having said that, there’s not a day that goes by that someone isn’t telling us about other potential uses for My Team Sphere. Last week one person said he wanted to use it for her high school class, while another person said he wanted to use it for his professional band. What this is reflecting is the desire in multiple marketplaces for personalized and private social experiences. I am confident that we’ll get there, but our first priority is to fully and successfully develop and market My Team Sphere. By doing so, we will have built a foundation from which numerous other high-value applications can be launched.
