Opportunity
Immersive Sports Environments
The opportunity exists to engage, interact and to entertain every child in the modern world, in a new, different and meaningful way. The current growth in immersive sports has a 99% lean to hitting imaginary balls with plastic sticks! While this style of immersive technology is good for Microsoft and Nintendo’s, bottom line is it is no good for coaching, for development, for speed or agility. Think to yourself – have you ever caught an imaginary ball? I am sure the answer to this question is a resounding NO! Matchmedia’s immersive sports environments are a unique blend of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ worlds, fusing together the best aspects of both to create a never before seen experience, ‘where Interaction and Interactivity play together!’
Product or Service (Please Describe Product or Service)
Immersive Sports Environments (ISEs). Matchmedia Ireland have designed and planned approximately a dozen immersive sports environments. Matchmedia intend to implement the full service of these environments from conception, design, implementation, hardware, software and support. Matchmedia have been lucky enough to secure the support of the systems integration unit of NEC Europe. The service, or services, neatly combine the best of both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ sport. To give a simple example – instead of younger children playing the Nintendo Wii Tennis Game (playing simulated tennis in a virtual environment). Matchmedia’s ISE cleverly mixes the spectacular of virtual with the touch, movements and realism of proper sports equipment – nets, racquets, goal posts, balls etc. To give a realistic scenario – a child playing a professional coach on a court beamed using a powerful projector from a ceiling mount, only rather than projecting a ‘grass’ court or a ‘clay’ court why not have a ‘moon’ court, a ‘fluffy bunny’ court, or better still how about a ‘chocolate’ court bound to get the child’s attention and perhaps the attention of Mars or Cadburys?
Market size
As no product of this kind currently exists it can sometimes be difficult to assess the size of the potential market opportunity. We can, however, make some educated assumptions – by linking these assumptions together in a logical fashion a pretty clear picture of the potential market begins to appear.
Assumption 1 -Each year group in the United Kingdom contains nearly exactly a million members i.e. girls and boys aged 4-5 = 1 million. Our immersive technologies we feel have a useful life of perhaps a max of 14 years of age.
Assumption 2 -11 year groups in the United Kingdom therefore 1million x 11 =UK market -11 million potential users or just over 6% of the UK population. It would be fair to say that there are approximately 120 countries in the ‘known world’ therefore -approx target market size =1.3 billion. Or alternatively 6.7 Billion people in the World -perhaps 2 Billion in the ‘known world’ again equates to approximately 1.2 billion (6% of market)
Assumption 3 -When making these type of assumptions the finger is often pointed to internet useage ie current internet ‘take up’ is approx 2 billion -current active users on Facebook is heading fast for 1 billion. Although internet is a part of the overall plan for the ISEs -it is not a prerequisite for deployment. The goal is to develop a new market from an old theme.
Sales Channels
Philip Wilson CEO of MatchMedia is a hardened sales professional having worked in direct selling for almost 20 years. Sales would be driven through multiple channels dependent on the medium for example hardware sales would be implemented by trusted third party vendors in the various regions. Software would be handle by a software implementation specialist effectively giving MatchMedia the means to deploy globally but without any of the infrastructure head aches that you may encounter. Matchmedia have identified ‘Digital River’ as a software deployment partner. The old adage will apply here ‘build em cheap -and pile em high!’ any current players in this market ie Snibbe Interactive charge in the region of $100,000+ for a system. MatchMedia predict that these colossuses of the industry will struggle to compete with the introduction of lost cost systems such as the microsoft ‘kinnect’ offering. Matchmedia’s primary market opportunity is a ‘bottom up’ sales strategy -by saturating the ‘fat’ low cost end of the market to establish a firm base and revenues. Before sliding up the scale to attack the potentially more profitable larger contracts.
Management Team
Management currently consists of :
Philip Wilson (http://Linkedin.com/in/internetsense) -CEO and 70% stake holder. Philip is a thorough bred sales professional, net entrepreneur and has just recently been named among the 8 most creative minds in the UK & Ireland -attending a graduation ceremony in Glasgow and winning an all expenses paid trip to San Francisco and Palo Alto where Philip was a guest of the British Consulate and had one to one meetings and pitches with major players in both Facebook and Yahoo Sports. Philip is also a prolific speaker speaking on all things tech,sales and innovation related.
James McKay
James is a hardened investor with successful investments including local Stress management firm Stradia, James also has invested in a Scottish wind farm, a Norwegian credit card processor and a Dutch Architectural firm. James also has a significant property portfolio stretching from Berlin to Buenos Aries. James holds a 30% stake in MatchMedia Ireland Ltd
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