New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of our Startup Profile Series is to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow founders of new ventures to tell their story. This particular article is profiling one of the ten startups in the Dodgers Accelerator with R/GA, which is culminating in a Demo Day on November 10th at Dodger Stadium.
Company: Swish Analytics
Co-Founder: Bobby Skoff
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
1. What is your elevator pitch? 140 characters, please.
Swish is an algorithm-driven prediction system for sports betting & fantasy sports.
2. Problem & Solution
The world of sports, sports analytics and sports data to this point in time primarily consists of backward-looking information: “How has a player performed in the last x minutes, in his last x games, over the last x seasons.” As gaming/fantasy, betting, and coverage of sports continues to evolve and becomes more real-time focused, there is an increased need for accurate, reliable predictive data. Which is why we built Swish!
Swish is an algorithm-driven system that accurately projects the outcome of every statistic of every game across the NFL, NBA and MLB. By leveraging data and technology, we are actively change this narrative towards forward-looking valuable predictions.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market We are focused on helping sports bettors and fantasy players make more intelligent decisions. It is estimated that nearly $400B is wagered annually on sports in the US every year (99% of which is done outside of Las Vegas) and upwards of $1T globally. Daily Fantasy is the fastest growing sector in sports. People primarily rely on intuition, human bias and disparate data sources to make most decisions when playing these games.
We build tools to help these players win more, more often. You can think of these as Bloomberg Terminals for betting and daily fantasy. These are easy-to-use, customizable tools that cut down research time dramatically, and provide users all of the information they need to make smarter bets and lineups.
Longer-term, there are amazing opportunities for media companies, teams, and game makers to leverage our predictive data to enhance their experiences.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Our betting and fantasy tools are subscription-based offerings. Betting tools are priced at $99/month per sport, daily fantasy tools at $20/month per sport. We provide all customers a 7-day free trial for our products to get them acclimated with how to best utilize our system for their betting or fantasy needs. Most users cover the cost of their subscription within a week or two of games/bets.
5. Management Team – with titles
Joe Hagen – CEO, Co-Founder
Bobby Skoff – CPO, Co-Founder
Corey Beaumont – COO, Co-Founder
6. Are there any new groundbreaking technologies coming soon that we should know about?
Over the next month, we will be releasing the first of our real-time predictions tools for the NFL. This is an in-game experience (hosted on our site at swishanalytics.com) that delivers accurate predictions throughout the course of a game. For any given play, we will project the win probability for each team, expected points for the current drive, predictions for the three primary bet types – money line, spread, and point totals – along with real-time fantasy updates across the major DFS platforms. This will serve as the ultimate second-screen experience for bettors and fantasy players to make smarter in-game wagers, track their fantasy teams, and follow games from a cutting-edge predictive perspective.
7. What specifically attracted you to the opportunity to join the Dodgers/RGA Accelerator?
The opportunity to work alongside the Dodgers, one of the most respected and well-known brand in sports globally, was extremely compelling to us and our business. Through the program we have had direct access to some of the smartest and most influential minds in the sports industry; including leagues, teams, media partners, and investors. This has allowed us to better understand the challenges, needs, and overall landscape of the sports industry and how our product can best add value to specific verticals and partners.
We were also attracted to the opportunity to work with R/GA, who has provided amazing creative and business development support to our team. R/GA is one of the most well-connected companies in the world of sports media, branding, and overall partnerships, and we have extracted serious value from these connections and services. They have definitely helped “accelerate’ our core competencies in many ways.
The Swish team with Magic Johnson at the Dodgers Accelerator in Playa Vista.
Bonus questions:
What do you want the audience to know about your venture?
Technology is the most powerful tool available to you as fans, players, and bettors .. use it to your advantage! Currently, data analytics and tech are still in a somewhat infantile state across the global sports landscape and are generally underutilized by fans. Our goal is to help you leverage the smartest and most accurate technologies in the easiest and most efficient way possible – to help you win more and have more fun doing it.
If you were to invite any CEO to dinner who would it be and why? Peter Holt, Chairman and CEO of the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs are one of the ultimate winning franchises in all of sports over the last 20 years. Much like the New England Patriots in the NFL, they have experienced amazing success through extremely smart and strategic decision making. Cultivating players within an ecosystem, extracting value from every corner of an organization, and getting a massive groups of people to buy into a true “team” vision is a massive challenge. The Spurs have managed to outpace their peers in almost all of these aspects over the past 2+ decades, and I believe we could learn a lot about how to successfully lead a team from Peter, who has been at the helm for 19+ years.
