Craig Moody says he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. So when his son wanted to play video games rather than shoot hoops, Moody started thinking.
“I looked at my wife and I said, ‘If I could build a gym like a video game, I'd have it made,’” he said.
In 2012, he opened his first Shoot 360 immersive basketball gym in a small warehouse space in Beaverton. More than a decade later, he has 36 operating locations across North America with more than 15,000 members who train with the company’s proprietary technology that tracks their shots and stats.
The goal of the company is two-pronged, Moody said: to develop existing players' skills and to make basketball accessible to more people.
“This is not my first business, and I love the game of basketball. So what I understand is what can transfer to the court. But then Walt Disney was my favorite guy, so the innovation side of it, creating this really cool atmosphere, is just part of how I'm wired,” said Moody, who’s coached basketball at Concordia University and Cascade College in Portland.
Shoot 360’s locations operate as franchises with a membership model. These memberships cost about $150 a month and come with access to a gym and its on-site coaches. Moody said he toyed with the idea of building the company only through investors and raising capital, but found that franchising was the best option.
“There's so many people who are passionate about the game, and really passionate about kids, that we felt like that was going to help the game grow by franchising,” Moody said. “If I'm (a player), I can now enjoy the Shoot 360 brand and have all the tools that I need to help build skill, help advance my game and advance the game in my community.”
The gym started with simple computers attached to rebound machines that would track how many shots a player made. The computer would print out stats at the end of every session, and Moody would enter the stats into an Excel file so players could see where they needed to improve.
It wasn’t until 2016 that Shoot 360 developed technology to track a basketball’s movement on the court and Moody was able to ditch the handwritten stats.
Shoot 360 now has multiple patented innovations that allow players to shoot from anywhere within the three-point line and receive real-time coaching on a screen above the rebound machine. The tech also tracks the arc of a ball, how far back in the hoop it landed relative to the rim and how far left or right the ball was from the rim.
From there, the technology gives pointers to players via an AI-generated voice and live stats on a screen above the rebound machine. These stats also transfer to a player’s Shoot360 app so players can keep track of their performance histories.
The goal is to make the shot within a certain threshold of arc, depth and direction, because there is a 98% chance of making a shot when it's in that threshold, or “splash zone,” as Moody calls it. Chasing the perfect shot also helps make players across the country better quicker, something that he said has been on his mind for several years.
“As a basketball coach, the U.S. has really fallen behind in skill development. If you look at the NBA, a lot of the best players in the world are coming out of Europe,” Moody said. “That's because they spend so much more time developing skill, whereas in the U.S., kids will play games three or four days a week and maybe do one day of skill training, and typically the only day of skill training they get is actually in practice.”
Shoot 360 recently ventured outside of pure training and into competitive play with a new leagues format. The leagues allow teams of three to go head to head in shooting, either in-house or virtually from anywhere in the world.
The leagues help push the company’s goal to train the sport’s emerging talent, but Moody also hopes they get more people playing the game. The average viewership for a 2023 NBA game was 1.7 million, up double digits from the last season, but Moody estimates there are many more in the U.S. who enjoy watching or playing basketball. Many fans age out of playing, though, either after college or after they retire, he said.
Moody said he wants to do for basketball what pickleball did for tennis: get more people involved by making it more accessible to everyone. It made the court smaller and emphasized hitting, "the best part of the game," he said.
“We've done the same thing. Smaller court, the best part of the game — shooting — and then because how fast you shoot is the speed of the game, it's variable speed, depending on your ability level.”
CLOSER LOOK
Locations: 36
Employees: 400 worldwide
Patents: More than 30
Members: 15,000
