When they’re not on the field or the court, professional athletes often prepare for the next big game by watching game tape to learn about their opponent or improve upon the mistakes they previously made.
While youth sports teams don’t often hold themselves to the same standard, there are still plenty of parents on the sidelines attempting to shoot videos of their children. As any parent can tell you, though, it can be hard to know when your kid is going to catch that pop-fly or score the game-winning goal — not to mention the work of sifting through video footage after the game.
Those parents can now turn off their iPhone camera, as Austin startup Trace has developed an automated device that captures personalized videos of each youth sports player. The AI-based platform automatically records, edits and delivers videos of each player wearing a small tracking device tucked into a sleeve on the back of their leg.
Trace currently supports soccer, baseball and softball programs, but with $47 million in new funding, the company plans to make the technology available to more sports. The funding will also be used to hire more than 100 new positions this year.
The Series C raise, announced on Tuesday, brings the company’s total funding to $65.2 million. The round was led by Pelion Venture Partners and included participation from Lakestar, Toba Capital and NextGen VP.
Trace captures the footage with a wide-angle camera and proprietary GPS sensors, and then it uses advanced AI to analyze the footage and assemble a personalized game video.
Trace CEO David Lokshin said in a statement that the platform has been used by more than 1.4 million athletes. He said the game footage is helpful for athletes that want to improve their game, coaches that want to make strategic decisions and parents that want to watch and share videos of their child.
“Players want to see themselves and parents want to safeguard their children’s best life moments,” he said. “We let Sarah, and her parents, watch all of her plays in the game without any additional work or effort. You don’t have to record, you don’t have to do any editing, Sarah can sit back after the game and watch from her perspective, moment to moment, memory to memory.”
