This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Today, TeamSnap announced the launch of TeamSnap ONE, which they are billing as a “next generation platform poised to redefine the future of youth sports technology.”
Lofty wording. Does it hold up? I spoke to TeamSnap CTO Reed Shaffner - who co-founded live streaming and coaching resource platform MOJO Sports, which TeamSnap acquired in 2023 - for an in-depth interview to discuss what TeamSnap’s new platform means not only for the company, but also the youth sports tech landscape overall.
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Now, here’s everything you need to know about TeamSnap ONE and some BIG IDEAS from the interview.
First off, what is TeamSnap ONE?
TeamSnap ONE combines three elements:
Existing TeamSnap registration and team management platform
Live streaming
Coaching resources in partnership with essentially all the pro leagues
There is also a whole new UI. TeamSnap says ONE represents an “overhaul of [their] entire approach to data, architecture, personalization, workflow, and future innovation.” That last one means planned features around smart automation, predictive scheduling, and personalized training content.
In a press release, TeamSnap CEO Peter Frintzilas said:
"TeamSnap ONE is a major leap forward for TeamSnap and our community. For 15 years, TeamSnap has been at the forefront of technology that has defined youth sports team management. With TeamSnap ONE, we are not just evolving our product, or building the foundation for our next era of growth, we are setting a new bar for the future of youth sports technology by creating the most valuable experiences for millions of sports operators, coaches, families and players.”
TeamSnap says the new platform debuted in beta to select clubs earlier this year and called the results “overwhelmingly positive across a full range of customers.”
TeamSnap ONE officially launches today, with Shaffner holding webinars for key constituents this week. B2B organizations - the clubs and leagues TeamSnap sells to - will get access first, with the direct-to-consumer version getting updated in the coming months, according to Shaffner.
In our interview, we tackled all three major areas of the app, where tech is going in youth sports, and the overall youth sports landscape. It’d be hard to find someone better positioned to talk about youth sports tech than the guy who oversees a platform that reaches 30 million users.
Here is the interview, along with some of my BIG IDEAS from it. His quotes are in blue.
1) Modernizing Youth Sports Tech
Quotes are lightly edited for clarity
One of the things we're excited about right now is the stuff that our customers can't necessarily see, but they will feel. The way that we have re-architected the product with respect to performance, with respect to rebuilding our data models to be able to take advantage of all that is coming with AI.
I think usability across our space is an area where there's just a tremendous amount of opportunity. I there's a lot of great products out there. There's a lot of interesting ideas, but if you look at the quality of user experience, there's just a huge opportunity to do better. And that's been a massive focus for us.
One of the general critiques of youth sports tech has been around usability, with the larger platforms having existed for well more than a decade. With newer entrants coming into the space to modernize certain aspects of the ecosystem, there is some pressure to evolve existing tech for AI-enabled workflows and just general user-interface upgrades. TeamSnap seems to be leaning into that here.
2) Video Use Cases Expand Within Platform Apps
[Live stream and highlights] are all in one place. And there is a usability gain that comes from that, just in terms of what we can unlock. We know where your games are taking place. We know what your roster is already. And that's going to allow us to do some really cool things in terms of what we're able to derive from those streams. And because it's all connected to the organizational software, you're going to start to see us do things like open up this media to the organization. So if the parents have opted in, can I give you, the operator, access to that media to use in your marketing materials to send out the top 10 plays of the week to all of your members? And so we're really excited about what putting all that in one place can do.
He also mentioned they would focus on how to bring in the individual moments parents capture (a Trend Watch™ here on auto-generated highlights) so that they can be easily shared amongst the team.
This is a huge advantage registration and team management platforms have over standalone streaming and video sharing apps— they’re able to unlock many more use-cases and establish some network effects by having the entire league a button-press away.
This also makes the standalone companies obvious tuck-in acquisition targets, in my view.
3) Better Sponsor Integration
[You’ll see similar integration to what pro leagues are doing] where the scoreboard has branding on it. Digital overlays where if you're playing a soccer game you’ll have the little sponsor bars that run along the side of the field, are we putting those in the background?
We'd like to see [sponsorships] much more integrated into the flow of your use in a way that makes you happy. Is that scoreboard branding? If there was the play of the game, was it sponsored by someone? If we're generating that weekly highlight reel, are brands getting behind that? And so I think, and we just see a lot of really fun inventory. And videois a big part of this as well. Like the more video that's in, candidly, video advertising, there's a lot more money there.
A clear opportunity in youth sports is authentic sponsorship. Certainly, Fastbreak’s Connect division, BASE Sports Group, and TeamSnap’s own internal arm through its LeagueSide acquisition are already doing this for in-person activations. But TeamSnap is one of several technology platforms that has the scale to do it digitally. So it’s good to see they are thinking more strategically about how to integrate ads— a trend that is filtering down from the pro level. Integrated ads vs. standard commercials or pop-up and banner ads.
4) The Importance of Coaching Resources
There's always going to be the paid professional coaches. And I think you'll start to see us build more tooling for them where they can bring their own content and expertise. But for those coaches who need help, right? Who are in these organizations all over the country, all over the world, who sign up and say, you know what, I'm going to coach my son or daughter's flag football team next season. And they don't know what to do. They didn't play football. Maybe they did. They certainly didn't play flag football. And did they coach seven-year-olds in football? Did they remember playing? And so what do I do? And I think today, people go to the internet. They search for things. How do you know if it's age appropriate? Can you trust it? I found a drill that looks great, but it turns out this should be for 14-year-olds. And so what we're trying to bring to our product is a trusted resource that meets you where you are. We know the age of your team. You can tell us the skill level of your team.
And then can we turn around and curriculum that we've worked on with experts from around the world to make sure that we're giving you things that are perfect for your kids.
Huge trend in youth sports in general— more consistent and age-appropriate coaching tools, often backed by the pro leagues or governing bodies.
This is not necessarily new for TeamSnap, but it sounds like it will be more of a focus in TeamSnap ONE.
5) Does TeamSnap Go Public?
I say this with full sincerity, our team internally right now, every day we wake up saying, how do we make this experience better for our sports orgs and for our families? And we don't actually think about that in terms of a quarter, two quarters. Like we are looking out on a multi-year horizon of how are we going to realize the ultimate vision for our customers? If financial things change along that journey, so be it. But it truly is a secondary concern for all of us. I think right now we all feel very fortunate to be in this moment where there is an incredible amount of focus of capital, of energy coming into the space. And I think in those moments, you can either choose to focus on the capital and hype, or you can focus on building the right products for your customers. And we are very much choosing to focus on the latter, and we think that if we do that well, then the rest will follow.
Waud Capital took a majority stake in TeamSnap in 2021. That’s coming up on five years. So there’s no doubt there’s been plenty of thought given to what comes next for the company. But, a good answer here.
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Good game.