We dropped in yesterday on the Dublin Web Summit to take a look at what the digital future would look like.
The event has been a major success and close to 10,000 technology entrepreneurs and interested parties were in town to sell their ideas, their vision and in a lot of cases their companies.
Mobile was certainly a major focus of many of the applications and services that featured in the start up and developer zones. Productivity and social media were prominent though given the rise of sports analytics and the amounts of money and jobs being poured into it there was a paucity of sporting endeavours represented.
We did find five though, some of which are based on existing technology and some on an idea yet to fully fly.
1. Sport for Business member Bragbet was in a prominent position and reported a lot of interest from the attendees for its take on social betting. The service is live and gained a big boost through being part of the Wayra programme supported by O2. It encourages groups of friends to register in mini leagues and for each in turn to take on the role of a Captain for the week. They then have responsibility for a collective betting account, they can get tips and advice from their team members but there is competition in the form of each Captain’s choices being recorded and a league table built up.
2. My Sportner is a Morrocan based application based on linking people together to play sport with or against each other at a similar level. Individuals sign up and say if they are looking for players or looking for a game and indicate the level of ability and competitiveness sought. The app then matches based on location and looks to build an expanding network of sporting individuals. In an era of the individual and smaller communities it may have scope to link together those who are either travelling or outside the scope of a ready made network.
3. Totel Football is an online service linking the worlds of fantasy football and pool betting. It is based in Ireland and was founded by Declan O’Sullivan who previously worked in business development on a number of betting related projects. The idea is that games are framed around real life soccer matches where you can select a six player team with points given for goals, playing time, and a range of performance indicators. You pay a small sum to play each game and the prize is the collective pool of money which the players have staked, divided up based on a system of points allocated dependent on your stake. The concept has some merit in a vibrant betting and gaming market though the concept is more complex than the mega games which dominate the space and it does need a substantial audience to begin to generate substantial enough pools to be attractive.
4. Sport for Business member Special Olympics was present looking to find a suitable technology partner to develop an app that would help link together its athletes, families and supporters at local, European and International level.
5. FanFootage is another irish based company whose main focus to date has been on music concerts but which now sees an opportunity in sporting events. The company has proprietary technology which enables it stitch together video content taken on smartphones and uploaded by fans. It had a major breakthrough when signed up to do a ‘fan sourced’ video of a Bon Jovi concert earlier this year. Given the willingness of fans to capture content, and the poor quality of much of it, there is scope for this to catch on among fans. All those who contribute are credited on the finished video, a mako selling point if it has been assisted by the band or the sports organiser themselves.
Sport being the universal language it is there are likely to be many more of the applications and ideas on show that could be translated for sporting purpose. If only we knew which ones would make it…
We attended as a guest of Ulster Bank. Fellow Founder members of Sport for Business KPMG and Mason Hayes and Curran were also present in support of the Summit and those it brought together.
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