Match Day Revenues - Bouncing Back from Covid with Pixellot

Hi there, guys. Good evening, welcome to

this uh webinar with Pitch Hero uh and

the guys from uh Pixellot. It's great to

have them here. We're talking about

everything on video cameras. I shall

start by introducing a few people. Then

I'll introduce uh Neil and Ross. Guys,

you want to say have a couple of minutes

each and just uh introduce yourself?

Yes, thanks, Mark. So, my name is Ross

Tanner. I'm the the new business and

sales director here at Pixellot. Um

Neil, do you want to introduce yourself

as well? Yeah, hi guys. I'm Neil

Fairbend, just looking after the

partnerships in the UK. And uh for those

of you that uh have been following us,

we're just about to launch our air

camera. So, specifically looking after

that product. Uh welcome. Uh look

forward to the next hour or so.

Great. Great, thanks that. Now, this is

a part of um Pitch Hero's history that's

probably been with us from day one.

Since we started Pitch Hero over 10

years ago, we've known video was a major

part of grassroots sports. And out

there, teams and clubs um were trying to

capture video. And it was really

painful. Um one of the first items Pitch

Hero ever bought, before we bought an

Apple Mac, was a huge camera that had a

video player in the side. And you'd

record the entire 90-minute game onto a

video player. Then you'd have to come

home, the file would be gigs, four, five

gig. And then you'd have to play it back

onto your computer. Then you'd have to

edit it. It was a four, five-hour

post-match job. It was an incredible

burden for a player, for a sorry, for a

volunteer.

And as the years progressed, as we

started building websites and more

websites, clubs would ask us how that we

can help them with videos. We started

hosting videos, and that's quite hard

work because takes a lot of hosting, a

lot of server. Uploading a video is hard

work. Moving a video file is hard work.

Out of all the things that Pitch Hero

has achieved, we haven't come close to

really creating a viable solution for

the 5,000 clubs, 70,000 teams on Pitch

Hero who want to use video. And we've

tried, we've invested lots of money.

I've got surrounded here by some of the

devices that we tried to work with. So,

you may remember

we had a an app called Pitchero Play for

many years or for two seasons,

which worked on these Samsung phones.

And it was an Android app, so this is an

Android phone.

And this particular phone that Samsung

made had a zoom on the front of it. Uh

if I can switch it on, it pops out. And

that meant that it could zoom across the

entire field. So, you could get across

the field to do a half-decent recording.

Um and we created an app that you

videoed the game, and as you were

videoing it, you'd click the screen, and

if someone's got a goal, you hit score

goal, you hit the player's name, and it

would create that clip, and it would

send it to our server, and we would pull

in clips. And it worked really hard. And

we thought we were onto a winner. And

then Samsung stopped producing these

cameras because nobody wanted a huge

digital, sorry, optical lens in their

camera anymore. And we had about 40 of

them.

And I was

emailing every warehouse in Asia and

Thailand and China, everywhere trying to

find these, and and there were none. And

so then we had to get inventive, and we

had to try and find other devices. And

so we looked at things like these, these

sort of cameras that you get on the

front of your bike. We even looked at

using tablets because the cameras in

iPads were getting better and better,

and we we had some of these made, so

they'd sit on a tripod,

and you'd have your iPad on the back,

and you'd watch it that way.

But actually,

outdoor camera

videoing is really hard because you have

different lights, and in winter you have

the nightmare of it getting dark

quickly, then you then have floodlights,

and they can be yellow, and they can

flash sometimes, or they can be white.

So, getting a really good bit of video

captured is really hard work. None of

the hardware available to us could do

it.

And then you've also got the post-match

editing, you've got the post-match

uploading, and you've still got the

problem of a volunteer. You we still

need to somebody to sit on a chair and

move a camera around. So, when I look

back now, we were nowhere near the

solution. We we had all the right ideas,

but none of the right parts. We didn't

have the hardware, we didn't have the

software, and also we didn't have the

kind of funding you needed. We actually

went down to a company in Bristol

um to see if we could develop a camera.

And I was pretty much going in there

saying, "Can you just build me one of

these?"

uh with a bigger screen, latest Android

on. And they were like, "Yeah, we'd love

to do that." And I remember he's just He

was really polite with the chap, and we

were high-fiving and getting on really

well. Then about 5 days later, he sent

me um um the bill, and he said it cost

about 2 million pounds.

And you know, you you just fall off your

chair. So, we were never close to doing

it.

Um and from there, we backed away from

video. We host a lot of video,

and we publish a lot of videos that

people upload, and they tend to get it

off camera still. Um we do a lot of

national league level football, do a lot

of highlights there.

Um but in the last 2-3 years, we've seen

various players come onto the market who

have combined hardware with software.

They've developed their own hardware

system that's very clever, two cameras

blending together to create one one

image, and then mixing that with a bit

of AI, so they can tell what's going on,

which means you don't need a camera man,

which means you have a happy volunteer

who just can set it up and rather than

fiddling with a camera, he can watch the

game, he can watch his son and daughter

play or his mates play, and he's not

worried about his camera.

And that same camera can then do lots of

cool things post-match. The software,

the editing, the cropping, the clipping,

the stats, it has that as part of it.

And that same camera can be shared

amongst his club. So, rather than one

team

using it, because what often would you

have with a volunteer, it's their

camera.

And so, you have a guy, it's his camera,

he's not going to lend it to the second

team, he's not going to lend it to the

under-14s, he's going to take it home

with him.

But with this, this is a piece of kit

that the club can own, and the club can

share, and the club can even keep it in

one position, you know, if they know

where it works best on one pitch, it can

stay there. Volunteers can be trained

how to use it very easily, and it can

scale. So, we've seen these new

solutions coming along. Um there's two

or three, maybe four out there,

particularly in America, we've seen an

explosion, but they're mostly indoor,

the basketball scene in America has done

very well with indoor cameras.

But, those cameras aren't sort of

developed for that beautiful winter

weather that we have here in the UK,

where it's, you know, it could be dark

by 3:00 p.m. And then you've got yellow

flashing lights.

But, uh after speaking to to Neil and

Ross at length, um and the team back in

Israel, Pitchero is excited, really

excited to bring Pixellot and its