Sports Tech Businesses Transforming Fan Experience: From Grassroots to Professional

Hey ,

Welcome to the 16th edition of The Sports Stack! Thank you, as always, for being a subscriber, and welcome to our new subscribers!

While major leagues pursue billion-dollar broadcasting deals and AI-powered fan experiences, some of the most impactful sports technology innovations are emerging at the grassroots level, where access barriers are finally being broken down. I’m excited this week that our product spotlight is on a business that is doing just that, and they’re from close to home 😃.

In this week’s edition, we’ll cover:

• Russell Westbrook sharing The Sports Stack across his social media and the launch of AthleteOS.

• Product Spotlight: Democratising Elite Analysis - How Taka is Transforming Grassroots Football

• A recap of The Sports_Loft Summit - the best sports tech event in the UK?

• Quick hits + updates.

🤯 Our recent edition was picked up by Russell Westbrook himself and shared across his social media

Our last edition was undoubtedly our best-performing article, largely because I woke up the morning after publishing to discover that Russell Westbrook had reposted my tweet about his newsletter. Later that week, Westbrook Enterprises shared snippets of my article across Instagram and Threads. This was a lovely boost, 15 editions into The Sports Stack, and served as another reminder that things can just happen if you keep writing.

In addition to the traction the article received, I received a message from Rich Johnson at EndProduct about a new concept they are launching this week called AthleteOS, primarily focusing on athlete-led newsletters. This is excellent timing, but it also reinforced my belief that athletes are beginning to take ownership of their audiences, and there is a significant untapped opportunity for them to expand further.

If you are an athlete or work with athletes, you should sign up for more news on AthleteOS or reach out to Rich Johnson on LinkedIn - they’re building something special.

Congrats to everyone who answered 0.1% in our last edition’s trivia question:

According to industry data, what percentage of professional athletes across major leagues currently have their own newsletters?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 12.5% (10) 🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 5.2% (70) 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 0.1% (140) ⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 8.7% (10) 23 Votes

via @beehiiv polls

💡 Product Spotlight: Democratising Elite Analysis - How Taka is Transforming Grassroots Football

This week’s spotlight focuses on a company close to home for me; Taka - A Northern Irish sports technology company who are making strides across the US and the World. I spoke with their COO, Jamie Mudge, last week, and I was impressed with their focus on grassroots initiatives. In the past, I have written about how advancements in technology will have the greatest impact across grassroots and lower leagues due to the democratisation of access, and Taka is demonstrating that perfectly. 

What do they do? 

Taka is a platform for players, coaches and recruiters that utilises industry-leading technology and professional football analysts to elevate youth football (soccer). Taka provides athletes with personalised highlights and crucial exposure to college and professional recruiters, while facilitating streamlined performance analysis for coaches. Taka currently hosts over 50,000 Athlete Profiles, 26,000 analysed games and 6 million individual highlights.

In 2021, Taka formed a partnership with USYS (US Youth Soccer) that has grown over the years and supported the advancement of tens of thousands of youth players in the US. 

How does it work? 

In essence, Taka offers everyone at every level the opportunity to have their performance reviewed by a professional analyst. It enables players to utilise the content to enhance their performance, build their profiles, and gain access to academies, scholarships, and new teams. 

Video Capture and Review:

With advancements in video capture hardware and reduced costs, many youth games are now being recorded and can be uploaded into the Taka system. 

Action Identification and Categorisation

• Full-time analysts identify every significant player action during the game, tagging it with accuracy and ensuring that each significant action, whether positive or negative, is associated with every player. 

• As you can see in the video above, players and coaches can filter by actions such as ‘on-ball’, ‘intelligence’, ‘shot’, ‘defensive’, etc. 

• Jamie and I discussed whether computer vision and AI could enhance the efficiency of analysis. However, when working with lower-quality video and pitches (particularly in the US) that feature various lines, such as baseball and American football, it becomes quite challenging to address this issue and achieve the same level of output. 

Scoring and Quality of Play Metrics

Taka’s uniqueness lies in its scoring and quality of play metrics, which MLS NEXT has utilised for an update on the structure of their youth leagues (more on that in the next section). 

• All scored player actions within games are aggregated to generate offensive, defensive and overall Quality of Play ratings for each team. 

• Scores are adjusted based on the strength of the opponent, which helps to create a weighted and fair assessment of team performance. 

Making the headlines with their MLS NEXT collaboration - Participation vs Winning?

In April 2025, MLS NEXT introduced a significant shift in how its U13 and U14 leagues are evaluated, launching a pilot programme in collaboration with Taka. This initiative introduced a new "Quality of Play" ranking system, fundamentally changing the focus from results to holistic player and team development. 

As you can imagine, this deprioritisation of results has caused some noise and pushback among commentators; however, it makes a lot of sense. When youth players under the age of 14 are learning to play football, the emphasis should be on developing skills and knowledge rather than just on winning. Coaches who prioritise winning games in youth football put less emphasis on elevating individual players, and that’s when development can stall. 

How does the new format work?

The new system is designed to:

• Promote positive in-game moments and strategic development.

• Reduce the overemphasis on athletic traits that can skew results at younger ages.

• Encourage coaches to highlight both team strengths and areas for improvement.

• Nurture a passion for football regardless of wins and losses.

What’s next for Taka? 

Taka's ambitions are significant.

The upcoming release of a free version of their analysis software aims to remove barriers to entry for football players in the US and beyond, and a soon-to-be-released AI integration is intended to be transformative for talent identification in the sport.

Soon, from Northern Ireland to Australia, any player belonging to a team with filming capabilities will be able to create a Taka profile, curate their own highlights, and be visible to thousands of scouts around the world, creating a distribution channel for themselves.

And the football world isn't the limit. Taka has already consulted with major organisations within world rugby, and soon, the key elements of their football offering will be extended to that market too.

🚀 A recap of The Sports_Loft Summit - the best sports tech event in the UK?

A few weeks ago, I attended the Sports_Loft Summit in London for the second time, and it’s safe to say it was just as good as the first! If you’re not familiar with the Sports_Loft Summit, it’s a multi-day event that brings together 10 of the best early-stage start-ups and businesses making strides in the sports technology space. Charlie Greenwood and his team spend months monitoring and filtering hundreds of businesses before inviting the 10 best to pitch and present to an audience of rights holders, investors, and others in London. The quality is impressive, and as a sports tech / product-nut, it’s always my favourite event; this year was no different!

I know that Charlie will be sharing content from the day with Sports_Loft subscribers, so I won’t take up too much time sharing my thoughts. If you’d like to hear or read more, you should sign up here.

My favourites: 

I’m trying to keep my word count for this week’s edition tight, so I’m going to share a brief summary of the 3 businesses that stood out to me. I spoke with two of the founders of these companies at dinner on Tuesday evening, and it was clear they are incredibly passionate about what they do; it’s always great to learn a little bit more.

In no particular order! 

The Realest

I already knew a little bit about The Realest from when they went ‘viral’ in the golf world at The PGA Championships and I think it was safe to say there was some noise around the memorabilia that was being aunctioned, so I was excited when I saw that Scott from The Releast would be attending Sports Loft Summit.

They’re incredible at building hype and exclusivity around events and even worked with the Philadelphia Eagles to sell snow from their famous snow game last season. As Scott from The Realest put it, “To some, it’s baffling—Who pays for a bag of snow? But to others, it’s a priceless symbol of a moment in sports and internet history.”

The Realest enters a sports memorabilia market plagued by fraud, with counterfeit items representing an estimated 70-80% of signed memorabilia sold online, according to authentication experts.

Who are The Realest, and what do they do?

• They are a next-generation marketplace and authentication platform for sports, music and entertainment memorabilia, offering a live marketplace for fans to research, buy and sell physical items from events. 

• All items are sourced directly from artists, events, and venues; The Realest utilises ex-police operations staff to authenticate and collect evidence, ensuring everything is 100% authentic. (This is their USP) 

• They’ve developed their own authentication called The TRuEST, which adds covert and overt markings to all items. 

Here’s a short video on how their authenticity works.

Why do I love their model?

• Authenticity!

• Access to items - not everything is a $1000 item, and fans can purchase lower monetary value items that have real meaning to them.

• Secondary market for clubs to generate new revenue streams - the cool thing about items sold through The Realest platform are always available for sale. Even though you own an item you purchased, The Realest marketplace allows bids to be submitted for your items, meaning they can be sold multiple times. Each time an item is sold, the IP owner (e.g. team, athlete, etc.) earns revenue from the transaction.

• Sustainability - many sporting events create on-site assets for a one-off event that become outdated, or the brand changes for the next event, and in most cases, these assets are discarded. The Realest assists brands in finding a home for these items and reducing waste.

Badge

Badge is not a specific sports technology company, but it is developing technology that will have a significant impact across sports, particularly for those managing their own ticketing and events. 

TryBadge (Badge) is a developer platform that enables businesses to create, manage, and deliver interactive experiences within mobile wallets such as Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, and Samsung Wallet.

Why they stood out?

• They allow companies to communicate with users through the mobile wallet once a pass has been downloaded, such as a digital ticket. 

• Sports businesses already operating digital ticketing and wallet passes would be able to send push notifications to attendees regarding their events.

• The most impressive part is that, by default, Apple and Google automatically opt all wallet pass users into notifications, ensuring you have 100% access to your eventgoers, compared to only 30-40% of fans who have push notifications enabled on your app.

• You can push messages that include links and coupons, such as discounts, through the wallet to users, directing them to merchandise tents or prompting them to download your app.

Badge's position on Google's Wallet Developer Council and backing from QED Investors (who also backed Plaid) positions them perfectly as mobile wallets transition from payment tools to engagement platforms.

Here’s an Apple overview video explaining wallet passes & capability:

Gondola

Gondola (gondola.cc) is a platform designed for photographers, videographers, designers, and content creators to showcase their work, prove their impact, and unlock new opportunities.

What do they do?

• Portfolio & Attribution Management: Enables creators to build comprehensive portfolios by aggregating content from multiple platforms and accounts, while ensuring proper attribution and credit for all collaborators involved in content creation.

• Cross-Platform Analytics: Provides unified performance tracking and analytics across social media platforms, allowing creators to demonstrate their impact and ROI with data-backed metrics from any post or campaign.

• Creator-Brand Marketplace: Connects verified creators with brands and organisations through a discovery platform that matches talent based on style, previous partnerships, and engagement data, facilitating paid collaboration opportunities.

With over 2 million credited posts and adoption across every major US sports team, Gondola has quietly become the infrastructure layer solving the creator economy's attribution crisis; a problem that becomes more pressing as content creation professionalises and brands demand transparency about who actually created their viral content.

🗞️ Quick Hits & Updates:

📹️ Ref Cam at The FIFA World Club Cup - Referees wear a compact camera, mounted on the side of their head or integrated into their headset or chest, which captures video footage from their point of view and is presented as an additional angle for fans.

@daznfootball

Ref cam view of Neto’s goal is crazyyyy 🤯 Watch the @FIFAClubWorldCup | June 14 - July 13 | Every Game | Free | DAZN.com | #FIFACWC #Take... See more

📆 Fastbreak AI have brought its scheduling technology to Youth Sports:

⛵️ SAILGP launches the Tabletop iOS Viewer at Home. Now live in the SailGP app, the immersive viewer allows fans to transform any flat surface into a live, interactive SailGP racecourse powered by augmented reality.

This caught my eye, and I’m excited to see whether it can successfully bridge the gap between armchair fans and the live experience, and whether it’s a strong enough feature to create retention.

Thanks for reading,
Mark