Data and technology has transformed a myriad of sports to enhance the viewing experience to new heights as fans are gaining new ways to be entertained by their favourite sports. But how can technology play an equally important role in sports participation?
Insider Sport spoke to Runish Gudhka, former Kenya international cricketer and now CEO and Co-Founder of BatFast, a sports technology firm that utilises simulator technology to increase the participation of sports such as cricket.
Gudhka spoke on the evolution of sports technology, how the company is balancing both the participation and entertainment aspects, as well as how the simulator model has impacted not just cricket, but baseball participation too.
Insider Sport: Firstly Runish, from 2016 when BatFast was founded to the present day, how would you best describe how sports technology has evolved over this time?
I think sports, like every other industry, has evolved massively, especially over the last few years since the increased global adoption of the internet, mobile and AI. The sports industry itself is one of the fastest-growing industries and the adoption of technology has significantly increased here too.
This has been seen across different verticals within sports, including fan engagement and broadcast, where fans are able to watch sport in more ways than ever before. The emergence of short form content and mobile viewing have become very important to sports marketers and broadcasters in how they engage with their audiences.
Injury prevention has also become far more important for a lot of professional teams, especially improving how players recover from injuries and between games; as well as how they can minimise time lost through injuries for players. This contributes to performance improvement and player longevity from professional players all the way down to grassroots level.
Technology has also played a significant part in performance improvement. Individual and team training, tactics and analysis are all done significantly differently thanks to the numerous sports technology options that coaching departments have.
This increased adoption of technology has enabled decision makers across sporting organisations to become a lot more open to trying new things which is pleasing to see. Across the industry I think the attitude towards technology adoption has changed and, as result, we’re seeing it fuel further innovation and creativity. This is great for the sports industry in general, especially as sports bodies attempt to break into new markets outside their traditional countries, for instance cricket/soccer/rugby expanding to the US or American sports expanding to Europe.
Similarly, entertainment and social venues are trying to utilise technology to bring new sports to their customers. I think technology holds the key to expanding the engagement, participation and audience size of the sports industry.
Insider Sport: How much of an impact does technology have in evolving sports participation and getting people to try sports they might never have before?
I’d say the grassroots and recreation participation market is the most under-served aspect within the sports industry when it comes to technology adoption. The departments serving professional sports players usually have a lot more capital to deploy and adopt new technologies in comparison to the recreational side of sports where the responsibility seems to be delegated to government and not for profit institutions.
Similarly, broadcasters make significant revenues from sponsorships and subscriptions and so they are adopting technology to optimise the viewing experience. I think where perhaps most sports have fallen short is in participation and in trying to get more people playing the sport.
There is no doubt it’s becoming easier to watch sport, but I can’t necessarily say that it’s becoming easier to play sport, and, therefore, I think there is a potential gap in the market when it comes to recreational and grassroots sports to utilise technology to improve participation levels.
In my opinion, the gap between people playing sport and people watching sport is increasing in percentage points. I feel that is a shame considering playing sport is a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling than merely watching it.
That being said, there are efforts to develop lots of new ways of participating in sport. Using cricket and baseball as an example, we’ve seen the launch numerous participation programs, but these are not necessarily tech enabled, and their return on investment is hard to measure.
Insider Sport: Which age groups has BatFast seen its simulators gain the most participation and how is this reflective of the sport’s growth?
We have two different verticals. One is an entertainment vertical, and the other is a training vertical targeted to recreational and youth players.
In the entertainment vertical we see more adoption from adults, largely because our distribution channel is through social entertainment or family entertainment venues.
Through this we reach a lot of people who’ve never played cricket or baseball before, who can give the sport a go in a friendly environment with their friends and family. On the other hand, we also see many people who previously played in their younger years to re-engage with sport through this vertical.
Within the training vertical, we see adoption from players of all ages. For example, we see youth players utilise the technology, as an interactive way for them to enjoy the sport and become better. We also see a lot of adults adopt the technology as a way of coming back to play the sport as well, especially where previous barriers might’ve stopped their participation.
The biggest advantage we have for adults is that players can use our training technology without needing anyone else with them. This allows them to find time to play much easier compared to coordinating diaries with other similarly busy adults.
Insider Sport: Was it a conscious effort to introduce innovative online aspects of sports to increase adoption amongst young people and does cricket benefit from this the most?
The initial problem that we were trying to solve was based on our own experiences and particularly my experience. The older I got and the more I had to prioritise work and social commitments and I found it challenging to make time for playing cricket competitively.
Upon research, I found that this was a common thread across most people. From the age of 16, drop outs in most sports, but particularly cricket, was quite high.
As we started to develop the technology, we realised that there was a similar challenge across three or four other sports, like baseball or tennis. It then morphed into something where we could not only solve challenges for adult players but also use the technology to get new people to play sport.
We wanted to get people to engage with sport and see it in a new light, especially having come across businesses like Top Golf, which really appealed to people who have never played golf. It encourages people to swing a golf club, hitting a few balls and having fun doing that. This was very important to us as we feel people always need to have fun participating in sport no matter whether they’re practising or just spending time with loved ones.
Insider Sport: Besides cricket, which other sports has BatFast tailored to or is looking to create simulators to increase access to?
We’ve actually been pulled into a few industries, including ones we weren’t sure we wanted to go into when we started out. For example, we got an opportunity to get involved with baseball in 2019, which we accepted. In hindsight, it was a great decision for us to expand out a little bit!
After branching out into baseball, we got some interest from tennis as well. Largely, the sports we get into come from our clients and existing partners who think our technology can be used to solve some of their existing challenges. We’ve built the product in such a way that it can be utilised in a wide range of sports. The underlying architecture is modular, so we can pick and choose different sports and adapt the functionality and feature sets.
The bigger question we ask ourselves is whether it’s the right decision strategically and commercially and whether we are being focused enough? We try to phase ourselves into new sports too instead of rushing in. As we scale, we do have the opportunity to build out into any ball sport, and we would like to be able to do that, especially the sports with similar challenges.
The main characteristics being that they require a team or a number of players to participate; or that they have longer formats, are slightly slower in nature; need lots of real estate; or are struggling to attract or retain players.
Insider Sport: As time has progressed, how has BatFast built on its technological infrastructure to not only increase adoption, but also improve the user’s performance?
We are measuring different kinds of player metrics and statistics to be able to really understand the use case for it. Before going too far into the technical details around player improvement, what we’ve asked is, do players enjoy it and do they want to use it regularly? We always feel the first step towards any kind of adoption is players need to want to buy into it.
We’re seeing very positive trends towards players adopting the technology for repeat use. Repeat use is a big metric for us, because the players themselves must feel they are improving enough to return to it.
Also, we have a lot of online data that we provide players, and we track utilisation data points to see what particular data people are interested in, or what sort of content they’re engaging with, so that we can focus on and develop those further to help players get the most out of the technology.
We maintain close communication with players, coaches and researchers to ensure we are getting well rounded feedback.
Additionally, we carry out pilots with coaches and professional players to get their first-hand feedback as well. Through those processes we’re starting to see some very positive metrics, which is why we’re excited to invest more into the performance vertical as well.
Insider Sport: Lastly Runish, and thank you for your time, over your time as a professional cricket player, how important would this technology have been for access to the sport and why is it still important today?
I’ve always seen myself as a user, as the type of person that our technology is trying to provide a solution for. I see how both our entertainment and performance products would have been – and still would be – helpful for me.
The entertainment product is helpful because it allows me to try to get more people within my network and social groups playing cricket. I found myself as the only one in my high school social groups and family who took playing cricket seriously. So being able to share my passion with them is a great feeling.
From a performance perspective, technology like this would have helped immensely. The ability to find a place where you can go and practise regularly at an affordable price by yourself is a massive solution for a huge part of the market in a lot of sports. Especially as we develop into a much more intelligent and automated solution, it’ll become a must-have in every player’s game.
I think we’ll see that 20-30% of players’ practice will need to be done in simulated environments. To be clear, we’ve never tried to replace the different forms of practice, because there’s immense value in all of them.
You can compare technology such as ours to the fitness industry’s use of treadmills and gym machines in the fact they are a key, normalised component of the industry. As the technology develops, I think it will become the norm for player improvement.
