
Ask HN: How Can the Sports Industry be Disrupted? - aashaykumar92
I'm a sports fanatic, plain and simple. I love to watch and play almost any sport. Favorite is soccer (I've played my entire life) by far, followed respectively by football, hockey, basketball, tennis and baseball. But with any of them, I just can't find a 'problem' with it. Maybe I'm trying too hard to look. But the only things that seem to do well is verification technology (GoalCam in hockey, Zoom-in technology for refs, etc.). Isn't there something else that can be done?<p>One idea was to allow for people to upgrade their tickets in-game. So let's say I'm sitting in the nosebleed section (really high up) but I really want to move closer to the action...I would open x app on my phone and see what open seats are closer. Once I find one that I like, I can pay for it right on the app (I take a cut of sales) and head down to those seats. But then I quickly realized it would be pricey and I don't think it's something that many people want.<p>There's gotta be more...<p>If you have any ideas you'd be open to discussing, ping me: aashayk @ Googles Email Service
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larsonf
At least in baseball, a lot of teams--believe or not--are not run like
businesses where the main goal is to earn a profit. Instead, they are run
organizations where the main goal is to win. The argument is that winning
leads to more business as a fact of the universe. It's bizarre.

I mean, look at that whole MoneyBall thing: instead of trying to focus on
understanding why people come to games, the Oakland A' focused on optimizing
performance for less, not necessarily more profit for less. So, instead of
being disruptive on the business model side, it's disruptive on the game-
itself-side. This kind of sentiment is shockingly pervasive.

On the other hand, look at the Giants. The Giants--and you no doubt know about
this--do this dynamic pricing where they charge ticket prices based on
weather, who's playing, etc, in order to optimize the amount of people coming
to games. The focus is business-side. Interestingly, maybe keeping a full
stadium is why the Giants win so much.

Shoot, what if you did that but with Machine Learning for all aspects of what
the teams sell…tickets to souvenirs to hotdogs. And what if you made it so
teams could email fans (or through some push on an app) saying, 'hey, free
tickets today!'. And then what if you brought that to smaller organizations
like the minor leagues and then to the NCAA. How many NCAA teams are there,
like 10000?

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aidenn0
In baseball, currently, the TV contract dominates income, which means your
income is more or less directly tied to how recently you signed your TV
contract. Medium market teams with very recent TV contracts are wealthier than
the Atlanta Braves, which has the worst TV contract of all the big-market
teams.

The upwards trend of TV contracts clearly isn't sustainable, but trying to
extract the maximum value from your attendees just seems less interesting at
the present.

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gesman
Gamecam - simple on-and-go device to stick to the poll or wall and have it
wirelessly broadcasting game over the internet (possibly via nearby tethered
laptop connection). Not talking about NFL or NHL games, but more about kids
and parents sports. Tons of parents cannot attend their kids games and feel
guilty about it. Buying "remote" access to game like that would be well
appreciated.

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landland
I'd like the ability to pay per view. I don't have a lot of TV channels but
like watching sports, why can't I pay for the NBA or NHL finals on a pay per
view basis? It is probably something to do with licensing, but if that could
be cracked I would be a customer.

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sunnynagra
We are trying to disrupt the non pro basketball space at StatTrackr
(www.stattrackr.com). Most companies focus on the Pros or top college program.
There are tons of basketball stat keeping apps (including our own) and we are
providing centralized place for players to share their stats and an API for
developers to access the data.

<http://www.stattrackr.com>

<http://developer.stattrackr.com>

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aashaykumar92
Seems very susceptible to cheating...as in player X, who sucks, can record
superb (but fake) stats on this app. Correct? Or is there something to block
this?

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sunnynagra
I would say ~90% of the stat recorders for our iOS app are coaches who use the
tools to scout players or help review strengths and weaknesses of their
players, so we are not as worried about incorrect stats. Anybody can record
stats for any player, but the owner of the player profile must approve the
stat line before it becomes public, so that prevents others from purposefully
harming another players stats. Ultimately, the correctness of the stat line
falls upon the player (or owner of the player profile), so they put their
integrity on the line when updating or accepting their stat lines.

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felipebrnd
Maybe an investment system, where an individual may invest on a team or player
and get some ROI.

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ig1
Sounds like what Pogoseat are doing. Yield management of sports tickets is a
fairly big thing and there's quite a few startups in the pre-game space for
it.

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X4
Make something better than Soylent and sell internationally. Would buy it.

