Sports analytics company Rapsodo has assembled an impressive list of customers since its founding in 2010.
Its hardware products designed to track baseball data are used by 30 Major League Baseball teams and have been purchased individually by more than 300 MLB players. Rapsodo, which is based in Singapore and has its U.S. headquarters in St. Louis, has developed hardware technology that uses camera and radar technology to record and analyze data from baseball, softball and golf training sessions.
In recent years, the company has teed up rapid growth, landing a spot on the lnc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies, with its revenue increasing 464% from 2017 to 2020 to between $30 million and $40 million, about 90% of which comes from U.S. customers.
Its customer base has expanded as more college and youth baseball programs adopt its technology, said Art Chou, general manager of Rapsodo’s North America division. But in addition to building out its client roster, Rapsodo’s growth strategy involves deepening its connection with athletes, with plans to provide them new software features to better make use of the data derived from its hardware to improve their on-field performance.
“We are shifting gears a little bit from a hardware-driven tech company to a software-driven, consumer experience company. That’s where you’re going to see our growth,” said Chou.
Rapsodo’s emergence comes as analytics have become an increasingly pivotal part of sports. Measured as a $2.2 billion global market in 2020, the sports analytics industry is expected to top $10 billion in revenue by 2028.
For Rapsodo, its blueprint includes plans to increase its presence in St. Louis by adding at least 15 employees in the coming months, while scouting locations for a new local office.
Golf origins
Rapsodo's founder and CEO Batuhan Okur, an engineer by trade, conceptualized the company after struggling to track golf balls while at a driving range. At the time, radar systems built to track and monitor the trajectory of golf balls were a luxury, with some systems costing $15,000 to $20,000.
“Like any good engineer, he says ‘I could design something much more efficiently and much cheaper than that,'” said Chou.
Rapsodo in 2015 released its first product, a golf launch monitor that is distributed by golf products company SkyTrak.
Chou began working with Rapsodo initially in a consulting role, helping launch its “diamond sports” unit that sells hardware to capture pitching and hitting data for baseball and softball players. He previously held executive roles with Town and Country-based baseball equipment manufacturer Rawlings Sports Good and, before that, in research and development for golf brand Titleist.
Rapsodo entered into the baseball and softball markets in 2016 at a key time for the sports. MLB at that time began equipping the stadiums of its 30 teams with its StatCast system, which uses cameras and radar technology to collect data. The implementation of the StatCast opened up a market opportunity for Rapsodo, Chou said. It deepened baseball's use of analytics, elevating the importance of statistics like a pitcher’s spin rate and batter’s exit velocity.
While Rapsodo wasn't involved in the StatCast rollout, the fact that such data was being employed by big-league clubs "creates a marketplace based on this new definition of performance," Chou said. "That’s the way we saw it happening in 2015 and 2016 and that’s the way we’ve plotted our approach."
As MLB teams began making decisions based on complex statistical categories like spin rate an exit velocity, Chou said Rapsodo figured all levels of the game, from youth to college, would want to do the same. But those organizations don't have the same resources as MLB clubs, creating a market opportunity for Rapsodo.
“What we’ve done is basically taken the technology to allow us to do it in a very economical way," he said.
Eventually, MLB teams became customers, providing further market validation. However, Rapsodo says its “bread and butter” customers are softball and baseball youth development academies and college programs. Chou said more than 1,000 NCAA programs use its products as well as over 1,000 academy programs, with the company estimating there are 4,000 such youth programs nationwide.
“We think every single one of them should be a target customer of ours,” Chou said.
Expanding its reach
Rapsodo is also expanding its golf business, launching a second product in 2019: a mobile launch monitor that retails for $499.99. Released just months before the Covid-19 pandemic, Chou said the company experienced strong sales figures as the popularity of golf ticked up in 2020.
As Rapsodo targets continued growth, it plans to put a greater emphasis on how the data its systems generate is consumed by creating new subscription software products.
“The real growth (opportunity) for us is being able to deliver actionable insights to the athletes to tell them not only here’s what your data means, but here’s what to do with it,” Chou said.
With its hardware, Rapsodo has formed connections with teams and organizations. Its software strategy is designed to align the company more closely with athletes themselves. The company has already started to expand its software offerings, announcing in November a new golf product called “Insights" that will be offered to premium subscribers and offer new graphs and visuals on their golf game.
Chou said he expects Rapsodo’s growth to boost its U.S. operations, which includes sales, support and marketing functions. Rapsodo, which currently operates out of Chesterfield Mall, hopes to soon purchase its own building locally. Chou said it's on the hunt for a building that has a mix of office and warehouse space and that includes roughly 25,000 to 40,000 square feet in size.
More about Rapsodo
What it does: A sports analytics company that develops and sells hardware technologies designed to collect and analyze data and analytics for golf, baseball and softball players.
Headquarters: Rapsodo is headquartered in Singapore and has its U.S. operations based in St. Louis. It also has offices in Turkey and Japan.
Revenue: The company said its annual revenue is between $25 million and $35 million in the U.S. and $30 to $40 million globally.
Employees: More than 175 globally. It has 37 employees in the U.S., with 35 based in St. Louis.
