A mobile-media company that utilizes artificial intelligence to send bite-size plays from sporting events to subscribers”™ Internet-enabled devices is growing its new home in Stamford.
Leading his company, LiveClips, into this new unchartered territory of AI-enabled live mobile content is CEO Lewis Bakes.
“We provide fans with the ability to view exactly what they want, when they want, where they want, within seconds of the live action.”
The company made the move from Manhattan to Stamford earlier this year after receiving a persuasive $1 million investment by Connecticut Innovations Inc.
Since its move, the company”™s staff has tripled to 15 and it”™s still hiring.
Bakes, a New Canaan resident, said the move brings them closer to their largest customer, Bristol-based ESPN.
LiveClips”™ product is based on software and hardware that automatically picks out key actions such as touchdowns, goals and major game-changing plays, and immediately sends those 10- to 15-second clips to smartphones and tablets.
The artificial intelligence aspect of the system is able to determine by reading movement, say on a football field, as to whether the play should be saved and sent.
The system also scrapes the information that television networks overlay on the footage to build a metadata description to accompany the video clips. All that occurs in mere seconds. The videos can be shared on social media sites.
The service, which can be paid or free dependent on the application through which it is running, will also be offering incorporated advertising with the clips. LiveClips will release its own app this fall.
“We create a very strong live video narrative of the game,” Bakes said.
The company was founded in 2008 in Manhattan and launched its product last year to focus on the 2011 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
LiveClips is a d.b.a for the company On Demand Real Time and was founded by Douglas Vunic, president and chief technology officer of the company. Vunic has a background in computer vision, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Kieran Hawe, a Stamford-based private digital media consultant, digital marketer and advisory board member at the Connecticut Online Marketing Association, said there are many factors that determine whether a user experience of live streaming is successful.
“Giving highlights in chunks not only overcomes technical limitations, but also plays to something people are already used to, especially when it comes to sports,” Hawe said.
There has been a major shift in users”™ acceptance, he said, of where and how content is viewed.
“Just look at the way the consumers”™ mindset has changed over the past few years. It is now becoming acceptable to watch short-form content on a mobile device. Long-form content, that is full shows, is still a ways off, but we”™ll get there. LiveClips is at the perfect point in time to take advantage of technology, device and consumer changes.”
Vunic said instead of detracting from live broadcasts, the software is in fact proving to bolster the typical experience of a game by allowing individuals to keep an eye on live action while out of touch, at work or abroad.
“Mobile viewing in this consumable size has really opened up some new doors to how fans approach sporting events,” Vunic said.
The sports leagues and broadcasters are finding they are able to increase the value of products they are already creating and develop new revenue and profit centers, he said.
LiveClips is serving ESPN”™s college football market through its Bowl Bound application.
“Last year was our first year around, we were small and ESPN wanted to kick the tires,” Bakes said. “This year, LiveClips will do more than 250 NCAA college football games. We did 19 live-action games this past weekend.”
In 2009, ESPN sent out 1.2 billion notifications of scoring points through text messages, in 2010 it was 3.1 billion alerts. “This year they”™re on pace to go over 6 billion alerts,” Bakes said.
“We are very interested in continuing to do football, we”™re doing soccer and basketball and we”™ve done work for Major League Baseball,” Bakes said. “We”™re working with ESPN on applying this to various other sports all the way to X-Games.”
Bakes said the company is also looking at getting involved overseas in cricket, rugby and auto racing, including Formula-1 and NASCAR.
“Eventually we will get to the point where live streaming is an accepted form of content consumption, we just aren’t there yet,” Hawe said.
As long as a company focuses on user experience and stays within current overall consumer limitations for content consumption, they can keep pushing the envelope, he said.
“The greatest thing about our model is that because it is run on artificial intelligence structure, the more games it runs through it learns from itself and provides hooks to understand what can be modified,” Bakes said. “From a standpoint of competition, that”™s a great element for our business because the longer we”™ve been around, the more games we”™ve run through and the higher the hurdle is for someone to compete against us.”
Bakes said the LiveClips product could also have applications to sports coaching, recruiting and even in places off the sports field.
LiveClips has developed a technology that will be available in 2012 that allows users to define their footage to receive specific players, plays and even bundle reels of all a fan”™s fantasy team”™s highlights.
“What we”™re doing is we”™re taking this to social media and virtualization,” Bakes said.
It”™s estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that 32 million people age 12 and older in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2010. Participation has grown more than 60 percent the past four years with 19 percent of males in the U.S. playing fantasy sports. The fantasy sports sector is estimated to have nearly $4 billion annual economic impact across the sports industry.
“People have been talking about the future of live content is mobile,” said Hawe. “We are finally getting to the point where technology is catching up with the ideas. I foresee the next two years being truly breakthrough in regards to mobile consumption of content.”
