A startup has developed a football intelligence platform that provides coaches with the detailed tendencies of their opponents in real-time during games.
The goal of Modern Football Technology’s proprietary platform is of course to help teams win games.
“We’ve revolutionized how coaches approach their game strategy,” co-founder Christian Masegian, an alumni and former football player for California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, told the Business Times.
“We’re really empowering them with a level of football intelligence that they’ve never had before,” he said.
In the past, teams grappled with inefficient video share tools and relied on manual efforts with limited analysis, he said.
Modern Football Technology transforms the way coaches approach game preparation and analysis, providing them with unparalleled data and insights to enhance their coaching decisions, said Masegian, 46, a wide receiver at CLU from 1996-2000.
Coaches currently have historical tendencies of their opponents, but not real-time data during a game, Masegian, whose degree is in computer science, said.
The company’s patent-pending platform captures 14 data points per play in real-time, providing coaches with valuable insights and historical patterns that help them predict their opponent’s next moves, he said.
“Through our platform, coaches can easily access and analyze real-time and historical tendencies and self-scout analytics in a single pane of glass,” the company says. “This enables them to make data-driven decisions and optimize their game strategy, ultimately leading to better performance on the field.”
For instance, Masegian said, “Say it’s third and short in the middle of the field, our platform can tell you how many times an opponent ran a particular coverage in that situation. Or how many times they ran a particular blitz in that situation.”
Thus, coaches can make adjustments live in real time, Masegian said.
The company’s packages range from entry-level to more expensive advanced levels.
For now, the platform is only available for offensive coaches, but will be available for defensive coaches in a few weeks, he said.
The start-up has made sales to a few colleges and high schools.
They include Thousand Oaks High School, Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas, Florida Atlantic University, and Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif.
Such technology is not allowed by the NFL during games but can be used during NFL practices, Masegian said.
The NFL “doesn’t allow any computers in the coaching box or on the sidelines other than the surface tablets that only provide still pictures of plays,” he said.
Masegian said the company wants to talk to other pro leagues such as the XFL and USFL.
The company was founded in January 2022 by Masegian and Tom Leogrande, another CLU graduate who also played and coached football there.
The two were working at the University of Texas, where Leogrande was the Longhorns football team’s offensive analyst and Masegian was the team’s head of technology and analytics.
“We built the application there for solving our own internal business problems, which was manually tagging practice and game plays,” Masegian said.
He said a standard practice for football coaches is to take notes with pens and paper on what transpired in a play.
“We’ve essentially just modernized that practice,” he said.
The company is based in Rocklin, Calif. near Sacramento with an office in Austin, Texas, but its ties to CLU and the local region is strong.
The company announced in August that it had received undisclosed pre-seed investment from Growth Factory, a nonprofit startup accelerator and venture fund.
Its mission is to launch and scale high-potential venture-backed companies in the greater Sacramento region.
“Growth Factory and our community of investors, partners and mentors are excited to support Christian and his team as they help coaches move from data fatigue to football intelligence and beyond,” Rick Spencer, Growth Factory Ventures’ managing partner, said in a release.
In September, California Lutheran University announced that Modern Football Technology was one of the winners in its first Dorfman Incubator Grants.
A total of $180,000 will provide hands-on educational opportunities for students while helping four alumni, including Masegian and Leogrande, and a professor launch their startups.
The grants are non-dilutive with no expectation of an equity stake or repayment. Recipients must provide hands-on experience to students or recent alumni and share their grant-funded experiences with the Cal Lutheran community through guest lectures, case studies or other means.
The grant will allow the company to accelerate the development of its SaaS-based analytics platform, the university said in a release.
The company said that both the Growth Factory investment and the Dorfman Incubator Grant further validate its mission to help football coaches at all levels simplify and elevate their use of technology to an elite level.
“We are opening up a pre-seed round of funding next quarter,” Masegian said. “We’re targeting angels and seed funds focused on revenue-generating SaaS businesses that share our vision for growth.
“Twelve months from now we will be at all levels of the sport – pro to youth – and ready to expand our platform to other sports,” he said.
Modern Football Technology was one of the more than 20 startups with display tables at the Business Times’ Central Coast Innovation Awards at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Goleta in March.
https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2023/05/05/modern-football-looks-to-revolutionize-the-game-off-the-field