Established by two friends back in 2008, Sportsmate Technologies was incepted with a view of keeping track of AFL (Australian Football League) scores in real-time. A decade later, the company has expanded to have a suite of eight different applications covering sporting codes from around the world, including NBA, NFL and EPL across both Android and iOS platforms. With a user base covering over 1.3 million monthly active users, predominantly in Australia, Sportsmate has ambitious growth targets in relevant overseas markets.
Up until the end of 2016, the company was deemed as a startup with no external investors at sight, wherein the day to day operations were being run by its co-founders. The completion of the first investment round saw Sportsmate prioritize their product to be much more user-centric rather than just for scores and statistics. Hence, opening the gates of world-class content into its solution suite.
Delivering an Unmatched Sporting Experience
Sportsmate has a total of 8 applications across both iOS and Android platform, covering the AFL, NRL, EPL, A-League, Super XV Rugby, NBA, NFL and its most recent addition, Cricket.
Its apps are predominantly a second screen companion for serious fans to stay up to date with everything doing the rounds in their sporting code. This includes real-time scores and statistics, news, video highlights and other exclusive content. “The core reason sports fans choose Sportsmate over other sporting apps is because of our reliability, speed and accuracy of real-time scores and statistics and our simple and clean user experience,” mentions Steve Murray, the CEO of Sportsmate.
Sportsmate empowers fans to be even more engaged in the sporting match by providing real-time statistics, scores and insights, helping them gain an even better understanding of the match than purely watching it alone.
Standing out from the Crowd
It should come as no surprise that Sportsmate continues to lead the app publishing space by creating a unique stable platform, so as to ensure the most engaging sporting experience for fans across the world. Speaking about the fantastic user experience its customized applications offer, Steve asserts “By heavily investing in UX (User Experience) we have been able to create one of the most loyal user bases in the Australian market, a claim which we are increasingly proud of.”
Much of the company’s success should be owed to its CEO, Steve Murray, whose 20 years of experience in the digital space has helped him shoulder the responsibly of Sportsmate with absolute efficiency.
The company has instilled a greater focus on integrated partnerships to provide viewers with even more value than what it is currently offering. It aims to do so by providing relevant information and engaging tools to keep them entertained between match days as well as with live updates during matches.
Rising Above the Challenges
Sportsmate incepted following the release of the first generation of iPhones. “We were very fortunate to ride the wave created by Apple.” An entirely new industry originated overnight and Sportsmate was smart enough to jump straight on it, irrespective of the uncertainty ahead.
At that point, no one could predict the explosive growth that the iOS app store would undergo and Sportsmate were lucky enough to be on the front end of that curve.
Sportsmate was self-funded during its initial seven years of operation, which meant that the balance of investment in growth and covering costs was always difficult for the company. In 2010, Sportsmate was one of the first app developers in Australia to adopt a pure advertising model, 12 months removed from the App store arrival. “We believed in the model but for many years we were waiting for the mobile advertising industry to mature.”
The search for talented engineers in such an entirely new industry was also a vivid challenge for the company. When large companies were offering huge chunk of money in the form of salary, Sportsmate offered people the chance to build and own something meaningful. Speaking about the employees of the company, Steve points out “We’ve been fortunate to have great employees who’ve made an incredible contribution in the past 10 years.”
The Sleeping Giant in the Sports Digital Space
The products of Sportsmate Technologies have had purely organic growth over the past 10 years and as such have an extremely loyal audience of avid sports fans, one which would be very difficult to match. The key to Sportsmate’s success lays in its ability to pivot the product towards new technology to provide users with even more engaging experiences; and with a cumulative total of 1.3 million users to its name, it is most certainly the sleeping giant in the sports digital space.
“We like to think we are the #1 companion app with sports fans across our codes and we will continue to innovate and contribute to the robust conversation online around stats in and around the sporting arena.”
The company understands that being independent in the multi-billion dollar sports tech industry presents with itself various challenges. But sport needs an independent commentator and Sportsmate will look for new opportunities to build new apps and expand its presence in the global digital sports media environment along the way.
Source :-The 10 Most Promising Sports Solution Providers 2018