Headquarters: Los Alamitos, Calif.
What they do: Sell custom mobile apps for real-time scoring and tracking of baseball, softball, basketball and football games. Apps sell for $9.99 each. Compatible with iPhones and iPads as well as Android phones and tablets.
Beyond youth sports: For MLB fans, an add-on package with daily lineups and roster updates for all big-league teams can be purchased.
What’s next: Touch-screen scoring apps are just getting started, said iScore co-founder Brett Law. As technology advances, so will iScore’s products. “The statistics are a fantastic way for coaches to help players develop,” Law said. “It’s an exciting time.”
Cumulative statistics, pitch-by-pitch accounts, real-time game trackers and batting spray
charts long ago became de rigueur for big-league games. Now the same detail can be assembled on a smartphone, tablet or laptop with fill-in-the-blank ease for youth leagues, too.
Say hello to Faster Than Monkeys, the California company behind the iScore line of apps for scoring baseball, softball, basketball and football games. A pair of software developers, Brett Law and John Busfield, founded the company in 2009. The first product launched, a baseball app, proved to be a hit at Apple’s iTunes store as an iPhone and iPad app.
The founders have children involved in sports and originally created the software for their own personal use. “And it spread from there,” said Law, the company’s CEO.
The apps cost $9.99 each and can be used for as many games as desired. Revenue totaled $700,000 last year and will grow to $1 million in 2012, the company said.
The app relieves coaches and parents of the tedium of manually scoring games and then having to submit the statistics and other information to league offices, community news services and the rest of the team. Everything in the iScore system can be instantly emailed.
Privately held Faster Than Monkeys has three employees and uses subcontractors, too. Running lean allowed the company to become profitable “from day one,” Law said.
Beyond the basic app, the company sells online team websites on a yearly subscription basis for $19.99 and has partnerships with companies that pay licensing fees to provide more in-depth statistical analysis. The latter service allows player comparisons and other measurements, typically used by high school and travel teams.
The company sees ample room for growth.
“The amount of data we’re collecting, it’s incredible,” Law said.
Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.
