Chicago's a town that loves its sports, so it's not surprising that he city's startup scene is doing some really innovative things when it comes to sports and technology.
Chicago Inno hosted its Football 2.0: Innovation in Sports event Wednesday night and packed the Kerryman with dozens of people interested in sports startups. We had eight great companies present what they are working on, which ranged from a startup selling cheap last-minute tickets, to a company creating sports stories from box scores, to a group working to give more information to sports teams around player injuries.
Big thanks to everyone who presented, and to our two great sponsors Handy and Gametime. The Kerryman was bumping last night, and here's a recap of the companies who attended.
Tom Derhake of Box Score Games talks about his company that gives venues like bars and restaurants interactive mobile apps built around live sporting events in order to increase customer engagement and capture data.
Based in Chicago, Box Score Games is in 15 markets around the country. It capitalizes on the fact that sports fans are on their phones during 80 percent of live games, allowing venues to connect with customers for up to 3 hours during a game.
It also recently won "most unique" at a startup competition in Las Vegas.
Gametime Chicago's GM Peter McKelvy explains how the new ticketing app allows sports fans to get cheap tickets at the last minute. The app algorithmically selects sports tickets by price and location and delivers them to your phone, eliminating the need to print a ticket.
Gametime sends professional photographers to the arena in order to capture every possible view, so you know how your view will be before you buy a ticket. The app is focused on sports, but it could begin selling concert tickets down the road.
Highstride co-founders Aparna Misra and Stefano Galiasso describe their platform that offers personalized training plans, daily advice, performance tracking, and race information to runners.
Born out of the University of Chicago, Highstride was a finalist in the 2014 UChicago New Venture Challenge and it recently presented at the Polsky Accelerator Program Demo Day.
Shingo Murata (left) and Craig Booth of Narrative Science explain how the company is making meaning out of big data. Narrative Science began as a project between journalism and computer science students at Northwestern that generated baseball game stories from the data in a box score.
Today, Narrative Science is telling all kinds of stories, from little league game recaps to complex analyses of large data sets.
Warren Rubinoff of Sports Lock tells the crowd about how his company is changing fantasy sports.
Sorts Lock is launching soon and is centered around the gambling aspect of fantasy sports, a la Fan Duel. It gives people the ability to make sports predictions, challenge others, engage with friends during live games, and provides a stage for fans to compete against one another.
Sean Strother talks about Tagkast, a social amplification tool for sponsored events that sends professional photographers to live events and then uses proprietary technology to quickly brand the images with banners and links.
Companies like Groupon, Red Bull and Subaru have used Tagkast's event marketing platform.
Team Interval's Tyrre Burks explains how the company's injury management system helps coaches track and manage their athletes' injuries. The platform creates an easy way to catalogue injuries to reduce liability for schools, and gives a portal for everyone from school administrators to parents to view injury information.
Founded by recent Northwestern graduates Elliot Hevel (left) and Griggin Kelly, TRAC - Timing and Racing Around the Clock - simplifies the running experience through innovative RFID timing equipment.
