66
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ISSUE 1 2014
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THE CHANNEL
n increasing amount of
extremely expensive
sport content is being
broadcast to sports fans
but there are no discovery engines
that help individuals navigate the
content that’s out there. Thuuz was
founded on the premise that by
measuring and tracking the
excitement level of games, matches
and races as they are taking place,
and by matching these events with
the personal profile of each
individual consumer – in terms of
the types of sports they love, the
teams they love, the types of
actions they want to watch – we can
make recommendations and say:
‘Hey, you should tune in now’.
We figured out the technology:
how to measure excitement, how to
personalise it for each individual
and build a discovery service that
works in real time as the action
takes place, how to notify
individuals in real time and provide
a tune–in directory that guides
sports fans into the action no matter
what channel or platform it might
be on. This leads to unexpected,
real‐time sports entertainment
which in turn leads to incremental
tune‐in, resulting in sports nirvana
for both the industry and the sports
fan at the end of the day.
In terms of sports covered, we
have just added golf and are going
to tackle motor sports next so we’ll
be covering the ten most popular
sports that are out there.
How do you measure excitement?
We are pulling in real time
information that helps to fuel our
algorithm. We are looking at
Twitter and the social conversations
that go on during games and
matches. We grab the play‐by‐play
feed from each of these matches,
and we use other sources such as
data streams by independent
service providers so that we under‐
stand the greater game or match
context, the rivalries, the history
between teams. All this gets fed
into an algorithm that’s measuring
the excitement level along a
number of different parameters. So
we look at how close a match is, at
the energy levels of a match, at
novelty and rare occurrences, at
individual plays by individual
athletes, at momentum shifts.
And then we match that up with
individual preferences: we know
which sports an individual enjoys
watching, which teams they have
an allegiance to, we know their
level of fanaticism. Certain fans only
want a few alerts to the greatest
games, others want to know about
every exciting game. Over time
we’ll get more information about
each fan and we’ll tailor the
algorithms accordingly.
What’s your business model?
Our business model is predicated
on selling our platform to our TV
service provider and consumer
electronics manufacturer partners
who, in turn, create advanced
sports discovery applications and
guides that they expose to fans
through their various consumer
touch points. We are free to
consumers but we reveal ourselves
to them through our partners via an
interface that looks very much like
a highly personalised sports EPG.
At the same time we have direct‐
to‐consumer applications that are
in the App Store for the iPhone and
in Google Play for Android
handsets, tablets and Google TV.
We don’t do any advertising, it’s
all grassroots evangelism by
consumers. The best form of feed‐
back that we receive is through the
reviews that we get in the App
Store and in Google Play – including
some fantastic feedback about how
we have changed sports fans’ lives.
Our primary user base is male,
aged 18‐35 years.
Why the launch on Google Glass?
We are not something that is in
front of you all the time. We want
to be silent until something really
exciting is happening in the world
of sports and only then are we
sending you a notification and
provide all the different linkages
for how you might want to engage
with the content. Google came to us
and asked us to develop an
application on Glass. It’s really a
great environment for us because
when we send off an alert – ‘Hey,
there is a really great match going
on and here’s how to tune in’ – it is
an interruption to your life but only
based on your own personal
preferences. That’s a really
important distinction to other sports
apps which tend to communicate
frequently and in a non‐personalised
manner. However Glass evolves,
we believe Thuuz should be there,
but in the background, ready to
inform you of exciting sports events
at a moment’s notice.
The future of sport is consumer
controlled. Sports contracts are
purchased for many years at a time.
In order for the new content to be
monetised and to pay back the
investment that has gone into
making all these games accessible,
sports fans need to be more deeply
engaged than they are today, and
that requires a discovery engine
that pulls people into incremental
games – games they originally
weren’t planning on watching.
Our goal is to tell people that
there are more great games out
there which you don’t want to miss.
This is clearly a unique value for
the sports fan and equally valuable
to the growth of the sports industry
as a whole.
Warren Packard, thank you.
A
Sports discovery platform
Thuuz
is now available on Google Glass.
Since its launch in 2010, Thuuz
Sports has formed partnerships
with major players like DISH
Network, TiVo, Liberty Global,
Sony and LG and is available on a
number of set-top-boxes,
connected TVs, and internet media
players, as well as direct-to-
consumer iOS, Android and
Google TV apps. We asked Thuuz
founder and CEO
Warren Packard
how Thuuz adds value for sports
content, service, and hardware
providers and how it generates
maximum excitement for the
sports fan
SPORTS
DISCOVERY
