ShotTracker

Market position

ShotTracker competes in basketball and sports performance analytics alongside Hudl, KINEXON and Blast Motion, differentiating on comprehensive real-time data capture and analytical depth. By early 2021 the system was in use by more than 60 NCAA men's and women's programs across 12 conferences, and the company described a strategy of accelerating deployment across NCAA Division I Power 6 conferences.

Differentiation rests on fully automated, sensor-based capture of 70-plus statistics with sub-second latency across the whole team, eliminating manual stat-keeping, combined with affordability relative to elite-level tracking systems and a single ecosystem that spans coaching, scouting, broadcast and fan engagement. The player tag is small and lightweight and the sensor-enabled ball is designed to feel like a standard ball.

Technology

The platform combines ultra-precise positional tracking with video and AI. Rafter-mounted anchors map the court in three dimensions and simultaneously track the location of a sensor-enabled ball and small player tags measuring 1.60 x 1.15 x 0.57 inches. A patented, proprietary algorithm converts raw positional data into more than 70 statistics streamed with sub-second latency to mobile and tablet apps and dashboards. Newer products layer AI on top of video and tracking data for scouting, on-bench decision support and fan-facing visualizations, and the company has worked on cloud infrastructure with 5G capabilities and integration with Evertz cloud-based live production, including automated camera operation for remote productions.

Go-to-market

The company sells directly to teams and athletic departments through demo requests and custom quotes, and has grown through collegiate adoption, with early clients providing case studies and testimonials. It has pursued equipment partnerships with basketball brands, a sponsorship-sales relationship with Learfield IMG, and broadcast/production partnerships. Public endorsements from prominent coaches and NBA figures are used as third-party validation.

Coaches, players and scouts; front-office executives including general managers, athletics directors, marketing professionals, content strategists and NIL coordinators; rights holders such as leagues, universities, teams and sports media and marketing companies; and professional, collegiate and high school referees. Early adoption centered on collegiate basketball programs, and the technology has also been extended toward youth basketball and fan engagement.

Geography

Headquartered in the Kansas City, Missouri area, with deployments across United States college basketball programs spanning 12 conferences; investor and partner Evertz Technologies is based in Canada.

History

Founded in 2013, the company spent its early years refining wearable and court sensors and its data-visualization software, using feedback from college programs. The founders self-funded a physical product and launched it at CES in early 2016. David Stern and Magic Johnson invested in October 2016 as part of a $5 million seed round, and Stern led a Series A in May 2018 that raised $10.4 million, bringing total investment to $21 million at that point; by late 2019 the company had raised roughly $27 million. In January 2021 it announced an $11 million financing led by Verizon Ventures and Evertz Technologies, taking total raised past $30 million. The company has since expanded from sensor analytics into AI-driven video, scouting and fan-engagement products.

Risks & controversies

Co-founder Davyeon Ross has described operational setbacks including difficulty deploying aspects of the technology, scaling the company and adapting to changes in how basketball practice is conducted. The system requires venue installation, a proprietary sensor-enabled ball and player-worn sensors, creating hardware and deployment dependencies. Industry observers cited by CNBC noted broader sports-tech risk that proliferating devices produce fragmented and excessive data. Leadership has also changed over time: Bill Moses was CEO at the time of the 2021 financing, while the company site now lists co-founder Davyeon Ross as CEO.