All right, welcome to the Buying Sandlot Podcast. I am Kyle Scott, founder of Buying Sandlot. On today's episode, I speak with Rob DeSalvo, who is the newly appointed president of Pixellot North America. For those who don't know, Pixellot is a leader in the youth and high school video and streaming space. They power over 600,000 high school events each year through their partnership with the NFHS network and now lean heavily into the consumer side of the business with their pixelot Air NXT portable camera. Pixellot was founded in Israel and has an international footprint, but they have a renewed focus on the US Market. Their CEO recently wrote an op ed making the case for continued investment in streaming tech, and Rob's appearance on this podcast is part of the effort to cement the brand as the leader in sports streaming in America. Before we get to the interview, I want to take a second to plug some of our own wares. So first and foremost, make sure you go to buyingsandlot.com and subscribe to our free newsletter. It goes out Monday, Wednesday and Friday and we bring you the latest news, analysis, insights and investment opportunities you need to know in youth sports. More and more recently, we are not only aggregating and compiling the news, we are breaking the news. Buying Sandlot is becoming the place the youth sports industry goes not just to read the news, but also to make the news. Once you subscribe, you will have the option to upgrade to a premium membership. Premium Premium membership gets you access to our deep dives which we do two to three times a month, benchmarking reports, discounts on future events like our conference next spring which I'll tell you about in a second, and access to a community growing community Slack Group. And speaking of the event, make sure to mark your calendars for either the first or second week of May next year. I know market for both. We're still working out all the details, most likely the first week in Philly where we are holding a two two and a half day youth sports business conference and we expect the leaders in the space to attend the conference. Stay tuned for more details. And if you're interested in sponsoring, speaking or having some expo space at the event, make sure to drop me an email@kyleighingsandlotall1word.com onto the interview with Rob. All right Rob, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining.

Thanks so much Kyle. Really appreciate you having me on today.

Why don't you tell I'm sure a lot of people in our audience know about Pixelot, but why don't you Give your background a little bit, you're new to the company and then talk a little bit about Pixelot and all the different areas of the business you guys are playing in right now.

Yeah, sure. So, you know, I've been in the media technology business my entire career. Started out in the sports business, was in the golf industry for, for a long time, both on the media side, media agency side of the business, and then also on the sales, advertising, hospitality side with Golf Digest. And then we was in the ad tech industry for a long time. But you know, on the flip side, on a personal level, I coached youth football and baseball and basketball and I had actually come across Pixellot, kind of ironically a youth organization that I coached against was setting up a camera at one of our games and I said, you know, what's that? He said, oh, this is our Pixelot camera. It's great, it films the game for us. And I said, wow, you know, this is unbelievable technology. I couldn't believe it. And then, so it's really interesting that, you know, fast forward a few years that I'm actually here, so excuse me. So what we do is we are, you know, every day around the world there are a million of sporting events that are unfolding. And you know, because of the costs that are involved with live production, a lot of these games, a high percentage of them are never broadcast. And Pixel Art was founded in 2013 exactly to solve that problem and has really revolutionized the sports world by devising automated production that enables high quality video coverage at a fraction of the cost of traditional production, so that fans, family, friends can watch these sporting events that matter to the most, both from a live streaming standpoint and also from an on demand standpoint after the fact. So that's, you know, that's kind of the core of what we started doing, but we have really expanded that into an end to end olution that's utilizing AI and machine learning and fixed and portable camera arrays, software, cloud computing, and really being able to deliver this professional looking coverage of youth sports and amateur sporting events. In addition, also using the analytics side of it. It's really two, two sided part of the business. There's the filming and the streaming from the camera standpoint, but then the cutting edge analytics and enabling detailed game insights, leveraging the technology to develop player highlights for the individual players that are playing in the games that we're broadcasting. Really enhancing the viewer engagement side of things. And we just feel like that's a game changer from a player development standpoint and also just from a viewing Standpoint as well, being able to watch the whole game but then also being able to dive into specifically what your children have done during the course of that game. And that's always fun to be able to see, you know, a couple of minute clips of, of what they accomplished during the course of the game. So really cool. I feel like I'm living my dream from, you know, being involved in the sports technology business and being able to live that every day.

I talked to David Rudolph from Play On a couple of, a couple of months ago with nfhs and I know you guys have a partnership there, so I'll ask you to talk about that. But one of the things he said, he said a lot of what they're doing wouldn't be possible without AI specifically when it comes to the highlights, identifying players. Like there's just a scale with youth and high school sports that is unmanable, literally with humans. But AI is able to unlock a little bit about that, talk about how AI plays into your guys business and then maybe a little bit on. I know, I know the partnership with PlayOn's a big part of what you guys do, so maybe touch on that as well.

Absolutely. So I mean he's, he's 100% dead on. We, we wouldn't be able to do what we're doing or be able to, you know, accomplish the goals that we have with the partnership with Play on without the AI side of things. The, the fact that these cameras can actually not only follow the ball during the course of the game and film everything and really make it look like a very well, well oiled machine from a production standpoint, but then be able to actually recognize from jersey color, from numbers to actually segment out the individual players and be able to put highlights together based off of what that player specifically is doing during the course of the game is unbelievable technology. And what's great is that it just gets better every day. I think that we have only scratched the surface of where we're going to be from an AI standpoint and what we're able to provide the end user, the consumer with from a data and analytics perspective at this point.

So you guys, you guys I think work under a few different models, right? I think I, I initially viewed you guys as just the camera tech. Right now you, you're, you're into the streaming side and now you're into the portable piece and it seems like there's a lot of momentum particularly on that portable side of the market. I know there's others out there, all are in Veo like there's others that are trying to do this. Talk about like where the meat of your business is today. And do you see it sort of staying there with, you know, kind of these fixed larger partnerships? Or do you see it putting these tools in the hands of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals, coaches, clubs that can, that can use it and like the tech is just, you know, more inexpensive, more portable? Is that kind of the future?

Yeah, I mean, you're hitting the nail on my head. It's both aspects right now with the higher percentage of it being more on that B2B side with the partnerships like Playon and like NBC Sports Engine, where we are partnering with them to enable our camera technology to be installed mostly from a fixed, a fixed install standpoint and then leveraging that camera to provide their consumers with streams and with content that are paying customers to NBC Sports Engine and Play On. So we're really just a facilitator there. Two really starting to lean really heavily into that B2C side of it where we are putting the cameras in the hands of those clubs and of the different, you know, even parents who want to make sure that they're live streaming, they're getting the memories of their children's games and, and, and pushing it from that perspective, I think that's a huge growth area that also is a more competitive space. There's more competitors there, It's a little bit more cutthroat. From a, you know, from a cost standpoint, you have to make sure that you are putting forth the technology that is really giving them what they want in addition to providing it in a way that is going to be cost effective for one club or for one, one consumer. I think one of the things we're seeing also is just with the explosion on the youth sports side of things, especially from the tournament standpoint, is that there's the opportunity for some of these big scale events in basketball and volleyball where there's multiple courts set up, multiple opportunities, cameras, filming and live streaming and then multiple ways to monetize that. Right. Whether it's with the live stream, whether it's with a highlights package combination of both. We're really trying to get as creative as we can with our customers, the business side of it, to provide the consumers with as many different possibilities to consume the content as we can. And there's a lot of really cool ways that we're working with our clients to do that.

I guess. How does the sales aspect I imagine for you guys, like, you know, you have the fixed B2B partnerships. Right. You can get kind of these long term, more traditional sales cycles and then when you go over the consumer side, you know, it sounds like as you just laid out entirely different world, lower price points. So it's, you know, the switching costs are lower, consumers are more fickle. There's always, you know, a different camera tech. Like how do you guys think about treating and maintaining that B2B those key B2B relationships you guys have? We have these fixed installs and you can get a lot of scale with while also trying to market to individuals. Like talk about the operational differences there. And I am, I'm guessing here, I imagine like you know, part of that you're relatively new to the company. It's an Israeli based company I believe. Right. So I imagine that consumer side is a big piece of the US focus in particular.

Yeah. So the fixed side definitely you're right. It's a lot longer term partnerships like Play on is multiyear. NBC Sports Engine is multi year. Some of our others in that bigger partnership space are multi year deals. Because you hit the nail on the head. The switching costs are a lot higher when you have these fixed install cameras and you're doing, you know, you have these partnerships that are throughout in the Play on case, thousands of locations and fields and venues versus the smaller, more B2C side of it where you do have lower switch costs. You can buy one of our air cameras and if for some reason it's not solving the need you have, you can easily go buy a VO or a huddle. And the switching costs there is not astronomical in a sense. So it's an interesting way to look at the business I think from a sales perspective we have to sales cycles or to sales ways that we look at it from the longer partnerships. You look at the salespeople that are working on those and they're wearing multiple hats. Sometimes they're subject matter experts. To help the plan or to help the NBC Sports Engine sales teams sell through a contract or venue. They're bringing the capabilities and the different types of technical advancements that we have that only our people would really know about. It would be super hard for the sellers on their side to be able to do that at the level of expertise that our people can versus the sellers that are selling more of those B2C deals which can be really one to maybe 20 cameras where they are leveraging sales enablement tools, looking for inbound leads, our marketing team working with them very closely to make sure that we are putting marketing efforts out there. In order to drive those types of qualified sales leads. And they're more traditional salespeople that are out there trying to broker these partnerships out in the space from anywhere from, you know, individuals to clubs to teams, all the way up to, you know, potentially the, the college level where, where we're trying to, you know, work with individual colleges to try to get them to do installs as well.

Yeah, what do you guys. What. When you talk to customers and the market in general, what is the market looking for most now? Or where does the market want to want the streaming, the streaming tech, the cameras to go? Right. I mean, obviously like historically there were some limitations or they seem like they're getting better every day, every month, every week. The AI is certainly helping with that, especially with the analytics. But what are you hearing from customers like, hey, like this is, this is what we want. What are some trends you're seeing out there?

I think it's a couple of things. First, I think it's ease of use. The easier we make it for the consumer to access this content, the better. That gives them the flexibility and the capabilities not only to access it themselves, but also to pass it on to other family members. You know, you might be a parent that's attending the game live, but the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, they're not able to be there. So being able to just send them a link to say, hey, here's the access to the live stream is just super easy for them to be able to access. So that's one thing and then the other thing I think is just the additional capabilities, you know, those value added services that we can add on whether it's the data and analytics, it's the highlight side of it. It's, you know, ways for them to, to segment out exactly what their athlete is doing versus, you know, the entire game or what everyone else is doing as part of the mix. So I think that it's a combination of those. But the ease of use is really a key one. And an example of that is part of what we've been doing with Game Changer. One of the things that's made it so seamless is that when you go to your, your son or daughter's baseball or softball game and it's an, it's a field that we are camera installed at, there's actually a QR code that is up on the backstop or somewhere at the field, scan it and you can actually get to the live stream right from that. So the ease of use there just makes it so easy for the parents to consume the content and have it be streaming and just makes it, makes it for a much, much better, more seamless experience.

So many people I talk to talk about the, the kind of edge cases and differences between sports, particularly in streaming cameras and tech. And it may only make up, you know, 5 or 10% of the cases you guys have to deal with, but they're like a mandatory 5 or 10%. Soccer is treated a little bit differently than baseball or basketball and volleyball. And just from the conversations I'm having, I seem to hear a lot of surmountable but challenges in those areas of being able to like, hey, have a one size fits all solution for multiple sports. Talk maybe about how you guys think about the differences between sports, how you're addressing them, you know, and then where there's still some room that, you know, for, for the tech to improve, to be able to understand that there's a difference in the way a baseball is tracked versus volleyball and the, the field movements and stuff, sizes and patterns and all that stuff.

Yeah, and we do, we do treat it differently when you buy, let's just use our mobile Air Air camera, for example. When you buy that camera and you're setting it up, you actually choose the sport that you're using it for because of exactly that. There are some nuances and some intricacies of how we're going to film the game from an algorithm standpoint based on what sport it is. So we're very understanding that there are differences and that, and that the consumer and also the coaches want there to be very specific things that are tailored towards their sport. And we're trying to do that as much as we possibly can. Ever evolving technology. Right. We are always looking for ways to improve that. We actually just earlier today we had a call with a potential basketball partner and we were talking about some of the things with the algorithm that we could either enhance, change, advance forward to help them achieve the goals that they specifically have for, for basketball in particular. And I think that that's always going to continue. One of the things I've Learned in my 9 weeks here so far is that this is such a custom industry and we almost, I would say we almost don't have a single deal that is exactly in the mold of another deal. Almost everything has some sort of custom element to it. And that's, you know, that's great. And that's also challenging. Right? It's great because we have such an opportunity to be that unique partner for somebody and bring them, bring them an opportunity or a Capability that they can't get anywhere else. But on the flip side, from a development standpoint, from a product marketing standpoint, from an operational standpoint, it makes for, you know, a couple of potential challenges as we have all these differentiated partnerships in place. But from my perspective, I love it that way. I think the more that we can have custom solutions out there, the better it positions us to be able to be a must have for, for some of our partners as we move forward.

It seems like there's a, a notion out there that the industry is just going to get consolidated by three big players and everything's able to scale the way a social media app would be on a phone where it's kind of one size fits all. But again to it's. It's a recurring theme on the interviews I've done on the show and people I've talked to for the newsletters like that's just not the case. There are so many of these custom, whether they're partnerships, you need boots on the ground, you need, the more user friendly you can make the consumer camera, then you know, you the better. But at the end of the day, you're going to need people who are able to understand the sport, understand the community, understand the partnership to really kind of implement that and work with through the issues and challenges. Talk about like, you know, kind of balancing scale with that like on the ground custom solution piece.

Yeah, I think that, I think that that's it. And you talk and I've heard in some of the other podcasts you've done talking about industry consolidation and what does that, you know, what does that mean as we're moving forward? And I think that because youth sports media has emerged as such an attractive kind of investment alternative to maybe even pro sports or lower entry costs and you know, audiences and things like that from an engagement standpoint. But there is some market fragmentation because of that, because of how different, because of how different the solutions are out there and how we might have something that's custom versus versus other competitors out there. It's creating ongoing opportunities for companies like us to have strategic partnerships in place, but not necessarily have there be consolidation and will there be consolidation? Absolutely. I mean, you've seen some of it out there. There's a lot of acquisition. You know, Huddle's been very active in the acquisition space. Playon has been active in the acquisition space. And I think that with each acquisition they're fulfilling a need that they feel like they need to go to market with. But it's not to the point Where I don't, you know, I don't think that there's going to be a case where we have just three big players in the space and everyone else is either gobbled up by them from an acquisition standpoint or going out of business. I truly do think there's so much opportunity and it's such a big spend industry. I mean, what was New York Times said, a $60 billion industry a couple of weeks ago, that there are, there is room for, for a ton of players to be out there and to really carve out their niche and, and be very successful companies in doing it.

Not just from your perspective, but overall in youth sports, where do you think there will be consolidation? Do you think it's more likely that it happens in kind of these sports based silos, or do you think it's more of like the category based silos? I talked to a guy from Pioneer Sports. They just, they own surf soccer, they bought Rush soccer. So they got this massive club organization and they're very much thinking about it in terms of soccer. They want to own the soccer stack, they want to own the tech, the platforms, the clubs, the relationships with sponsors. And I'd say from people I talked to like maybe 60, 60, 40 in terms of sport based consolidation versus category based. So how do you guys think about, do you think like there'll be like one or two players emerge? Maybe it's you guys in streaming and tech as like the leaders and they gobble everybody up, or do you think it'll, it'll go into these kind of sport based silos?

Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with you in that 60, 40 analogy. There are definitely some companies that want to own particular sports and they're doing everything. They tend to own either one or maybe two sports. And then there are some that, you know, what we feel is that there's opportunity for us to be an end to end solution in multiple sports and to continue going down that path of having anywhere from 14 to 20 sports that we have the capability to be honing in on, but doing it in a way that gives our customers the ability to do it from that very first beginning, whether it's a fixed camera or, or a mobile camera all the way through to all of the different analytics that you would need at the end of the day. And, and that's the, that's the space that we've carved out right now. We think there's tremendous opportunity for us to, to be the leader, if not one of the top leaders in that space. And we're going to continue going down that way. But I do think that there's going to be a combination of both for sure.

Do you guys listen? Obviously every company at some point you think about like, hey, we got a great business, someone comes along, offers obscene amount of money. But do you guys think of yourself as an acquirer? You know, are you looking to get tech or different pieces of the stack and bring it in? Or do you think more about like, hey, we have what we need. Let's just go to like, go scale this thing.

Yeah, I think it's, I think we're doing both. We are definitely always. You know, I think our, our CEO Daron has an eye for M and A. He's, he's been a CEO in the, in the technology space for probably 25 years now and he's had a number of very successful acquisitions. We had actually worked together previous to this company at my former company Perrion, and that's how I was brought over. But I definitely have conversations with him on potential, either M and A conversations to have that we can fill in what we think are some gaps that we can be better at or are we going to do it through just strategic partnerships to fill those gaps? So it's a combination of both. And I think that if, if the opportunity was right, we would certainly be open to acquisition conversations. What we've been doing recently is definitely strategic partnerships to fill some of those gaps from a B2B standpoint and how we can potentially leverage some of the technologies out there, especially in the AI space, some of the platforms, couple that with our camera technology and go to market as partners to really bring a solution to the market that, that encompasses both. So it's a combination of both. And I think that if the opportunity was right, we would definitely move forward with something that could be really cool for the future.

Does it make it easier that there has been some consolidation? So way back in the day when everything was individually owned and fragmented, that B2B side, the sales cycle is really like on the ground, boots on the ground, individual towns and zip codes. Does it make it easier that there's some consolidation so you could partner with? I'm just throwing it like, like a pioneer who. Now you got 150 clubs you can access. Pick your sport, pick your company. But it's like, okay, we strike1 partnership NFHS and we're able to like really get out there very quickly through one larger deal.

Absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, as you can probably imagine, it's a grind to Go club by club or team by team. So when there's the opportunity to have a bigger partnership like a pioneer or even what we've done with NBC, see and play on, to really, you know, bring an entire network into play versus the individuals, it certainly makes it certainly the opportunity to, to grow the business faster. And the cost, you know, I think that the cost when you go individually one by one, you know, is a lot more difficult to maintain that type of business model. So we are certainly looking for big partnerships. We want to make sure that we're leveraging all of our capabilities and, and bringing in a partner that can fill any gaps or any holes that we have in order to make it that much stronger of a solution. At the end of the day, I think one of the things that we're looking to do and trying to do is get a little closer to the consumer on some sides as well. And the combination of both being a partner that works through another business partner to get to the consumer, and then also having some partnerships where we are working directly with the consumer consumer, the combination of both of those I think will make us stronger in the long run.

We did a survey, it was two months ago, we actually sent it out, so probably should do it again because we'll have a bigger, bigger response rate. But people responded. The streaming adoption in some of these facilities, we did facility owners and operators and the streaming adoption was relatively low. It was like 15 to 16%. And granted, I think our sample size definitely skewed towards the smaller kind of individual training facilities. But you know, a lot of them have clubs, they run clubs, they run leagues and tournaments. So. But they're maybe not like these behemoths we see being built all over the country, which, you know, I think it's sort of table stakes for streaming. Of the ones who did, we kind of like cross reference some of the numbers and the ones who adopted streaming and recurring revenue had the highest revenue, had the highest satisfaction scores. Again, I don't think it's a indicative of a sample size of the whole industry, but I think it's directionally accurate. What do you like, think as maybe some of the challenges to individual facilities independently owned adopting, whether it's a fixed camera or a portable camera, like what are some of the challenges you guys have to hurdles you guys have to cross? Right. And how might they think about it versus a club that is just want to stream games but someone has a facility, maybe there's more training and, and practicing going on than games and maybe they don't Think like, hey, we don't need the streaming, like how do you guys think about approaching them? Because to me it seems like a huge opportunity and like the surface is barely being scratched in some ways.

So you're absolutely right. I think your numbers are fairly accurate. I think if we were to scale it up and it might be a good idea to do it, to do it again, to get the latest numbers. But we feel like there's a tremendous blue ocean in this specific part of the industry. And the reason is, is, you know, I think when we talk to some of these smaller facilities, because you're right when you talk about a lake point or some of the facilities that are multi sport venues that have a ton of fields, this is table stakes at this point. But when you talk about some of the smaller venues, I think from our perspective we need to get them over the hurdle of what potentially the initial costs are. Because you know, these especially the fixed cameras, they're not cheap. You know, the, the software, data and analytics programs that come along with it are not necessarily inexpensive when, when you're looking at it from a monthly or yearly basis. So it's trying to put what's been a successful model for someone else in their boat or in their size range, utilizing case studies and testimonials that we have. And we can say XYZ facility, which is very similar to yours, you know, had the same questions and had the same doubts and maybe had the same hurdles to overcome, but we were able to do this, this, this and this. And now they're, you know, they have five cameras installed and each one of those cameras is making X amount of revenue for them per year. So I think it's really just giving them the opportunity to voice their concerns, to voice their objections, and then trying to give them real world examples of how they can overcome them and how they can actually make this into a revenue driving opportunity for them. And that's what, you know, that's what we're trying to do, that's what our sales team is out there doing every day. We have some of our sellers that are specifically focused on the sports venues, the multi sport venues and even the smaller clubs that leverage fields. And I think you made a great point. I think even filming and streaming and getting the data from practice and from scrimmages and from sessions, from training sessions, things like that are hugely important as well and a huge opportunity. Especially once we get a camera in. It's like, hey, now you have that camera in your facility, leverage it to the, to the, to the most extent that you possibly can. Let's get as many hours of filming on that camera that you can. You know, let's, let's make sure that we're, we're really utilizing it to the utmost. And I think that that is starting to resonate in a lot of places. And I think that that's where a lot of our growth is going to come from in the future there in.

I imagine, you know, it gets better with 5G and things like that. But like, are there infrastructure challenges at especially outdoor fields, Wires, signals? I've had this theory, like, seems like an amazing business to like what, just wire fields, right? Like the, you know, the, the richest guys in America are always like the infrastructure guys, right? The train tracks guys, the power line guys. Like, you know, is there, is there anybody out there who is, who is like responsible for the electric and the broadband at these fields? And like, how do you guys, like, how many often do you run into that challenge?

It's a great question and it's actually a huge part of the business and something that a lot of people don't realize when we first start having the conversations or maybe people who are looking at our business from the outside are like, oh, it's great. You put a camera in and now all of a sudden, you know, you press a button and you start streaming. But we have to do site evaluations on all of these different fields. We have to give them the recommendations that we have on what their tech setup is now and then what it needs to be in order to make sure that the stream is going to be the quality that we need it to be. You know, it's one thing to put this camera in, but if you don't have the right wiring and the right setup and the right speed, the stream is not going to be an advantageous experience for your consumers. So that is all part of the conversation. And it's interesting. Some, some of these facilities or some of these venues or through Playon and NBC Sports, NBC Sports Engine will have people that go in that are, we're contracting and when we do the site evaluation and we put a deal in place, they're going out and they're doing the install and they're doing the wiring and they're setting up the VPU and making sure that everything is exactly how it needs to be. But yeah, that, that behind the scenes, that's probably one of the things that has been kind of most eye opening for me from a learning process in my few months here was like, wow, I didn't realize that much had to go into it on the back end to just get one of these installments set up to work.

Do you guys lean on 5G for like the portable camera or is it still requiring like on site broadband?

Yeah, no, we're trying, but, you know, it depends on the facility. If they have on site broadband, we'll leverage that. But yeah, 5G as well.

4G and 5G, does it differ? I imagine with NFHS, you guys are doing a lot at the high school level. How much, like, how do you sort of look at the pie from high school to middle travel, age all the way down to like 5, 6, 7 year olds. How do you guys. What's your mix like there and are there, are there. Are you more likely to run into those infrastructure challenges at the younger levels? Or is it just like everyone's got, you know, every school's got an issue the same way a local park has an issue?

Yeah, I mean, with play on that. That's really our high school, you know, with. With nhfs and all of the different high schools. That's where the bulk of our high school business, all of our high school business is coming from. So that's a big part of the overall business business where we see a ton of opportunity is on that youth, whether it's as young as, as 5U or 6U, all the way up through, you know, 8th grade, travel teams and, and things like that. But it, it differs by facility. Like, there could be a high school that has much worse infrastructure than a club that, you know, has. Has 5U to 12U. So it really does, it does depend. But yeah, there have definitely been situations where we've come across like, whoa, we need to start from the, from the ground up, up at this one. And then what we try to do is, you know, we're always keeping our ear close to the ground on any new facilities that are popping up. Because what we'd love to do is start those conversations on the ground, foundational level, so that we're getting all of this stuff installed in addition to cameras getting installed as the actual build is happening.

If only there was a newsletter that covered the opening of these new facilities across the.

If only there was.

I'm seeing now where our value is like, okay, we're covering that beat. All right.

I love it.

Talk about, like, so much capital investor interest. I know Pixelot's taken on money before. Maybe not specifically you guys, but just talk about the environment overall that you're seeing. I know you're you and I Are, you know, I'm six months into the space with buying sandlot, so I'm discovering a lot and peeling back layers of the onion. But is there anything else you can compare it to? Because, I mean, it's. I don't say frothy is the wrong word, but there is like very strong investor interest in this space, the likes of which I haven't seen in a while in any space.

I kind of like the frothy. The frothy?

Yeah. It comes with a negative connotation, but frothy can be good too. Everyone likes a little.

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's tremendous interest in this space right now. What lends to credibility to that is the mainstream media that's been covering it. Right. You see that article in the New York Times Ad Age, which is one of the biggest advertising and media side media outlets had. It also had a big article on it the other day. So when you see mainstream media getting into a vertical, like huge sports, you know that there's a big interest level there. And you're right. We've, you know, we have some partners on, on the PE side of things as well who have, who have been great investors in our business. They've seen the value in it and they see the value in, in the, that we're doing and the things that even some other companies out there are doing. So I, I do think that it's one of those things where it's, it's the hot button right now. Does it stay that for that long? That I think is still the question to be answered. And does something else come up that takes the attention away? Probably, you know, I think we see these things happen in cycles, but right now this is a super hot space on the back end from, from the meetings that I'm having and the conversations that I'm having, there are a lot of, you know, conversations going on, whether it's more investment into companies that are in the space, whether potential acquisitions that are going to potentially happen in the space. I think that there is just a lot of buzz in this industry right now, and I think it'll continue for a little while. I don't think it slows down anytime soon, but, but it's, you know, it's fun. I like being part of those conversations. I think they're really super interesting to be having. You know, whether it's something that we get involved in at some point is still tbd, but it's really, you know, I think from a private equity standpoint, the, the ears are perked up right now and people are looking for opportunities to, to get a piece of the pie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was talking to an investment banker earlier and, and you know, they, there's so many analogies to, you know, kind of these, these H Vac, these family run H Vac businesses that kind of famously get gobbled up by pe and you know, you have these independent operators who, who, you know, these businesses can scale with backend operations. And I think PE looks at it and sees all these diffuse operators and leagues and tournaments and they' could consolidate all this, consolidate the back end, save on cost. So I definitely see the interest and it's not like it's the, it's not the tulip craze. Like even if the, even if there's a recession, there's going to be tens of millions of kids playing sports every year. And maybe you don't have the investment interest, but that business just continues to exist. It's like the garbage company. It shows up every, every day, 100%.

It's funny, funny you said that because that's an analogy that I just used the other day in a conversation. This is, it truly is a recession proof business category. And I likened it even to myself. I'm like, you know, if I was to lose my job or if something happened that, you know, all of a sudden there's a big issue in the industry, I'm still going to find the money to have my kids play Little league and to have my kids play soccer and to participate in their high school sports which have a, have a, you know, a registration cost for every season as well. So there's still going to be millions of kids playing sports spring, summer, winter and fall every year. And you know, that's something that these companies look at and say, okay, is there risk involved in my investment? Absolutely. There's always going to be risk on, on playing the right card or not. But are the, are the chances that I'm going to be successful here a little higher in this industry than in others? Absolutely.

You mentioned a little bit, you mentioned, I think streaming or whatever, but talk about, I'm sorry, advertising. Talk about like the rights. Right. So you guys have lots of eyeballs and obviously the audience for the most part, although we are seeing some examples of like the Little League World Series is about to happen. We'll get good ratings. The flag football championship got excellent ratings for, you know, you know, they, it took the weight of ESPN to kind of push that forward. But there's a long tail here. How do you guys Think about valuing those eyeballs that are on the products you guys are streaming. It's obviously lots of parents and friends at a certain point. Like, there's. There's some real advertising scale potential there.

Absolutely. We have, you know, and I think we started to talk a little bit about this in our first conversation. We are having very active monetization conversations internally. One of the things that we are out there with, from a testing standpoint right now and talking to clients about is the virtual logo, right? So as we're streaming, we can actually put a brand's logo on the soccer field, on the football field, on the court, on the banner, or on the border, around the field, things like that. So we're looking, looking for really unique ways to be able to monetize, you know, and, and I think one of the things we talked about last time was, was this. Is this more of a national play or is it, you know, Bob's Cleaners in, in the town that, that you're broadcasting the game in? Obviously super hard to do it on a local level. I think what we want to do.

I've spent years in local media and I've sold the Bob's Cleaners. And it is tough to scale Bob.

It's a grind, right? It's a grind. It's a grind to scale. It's. It's a grind to. To try to figure out the. The right way to monetize it. So I think one of the things we're trying to do is look at it from more of a sponsorship standpoint. It's not really a CPM play. You're not going to, you know, at least right now, I think the scale is going to get there. But to your point, it's like if you're, you know, doing a Little League, I'll use my hometown. If you're doing a Cohasset Little League game, you know, maybe there's 10 viewers watching, watching that game, but I think if you pool it, and let's say we work with a partner like Game Changer and we say, okay, on all the Game Changer broadcasts around the country, we're going to have this virtual logo sponsorship available. And now Footlocker can buy it, or a big national brand can own that for the season or for a month or something like that, it really puts the monetization value in a different conversation and gives us the ability to drive a lot more revenue there. And then it's a rev share between us and Game Changer, so we're both benefiting from it. And I think that the data that we're able to start collecting on that and using Game Changer again as the example, now you're starting to feed into Dick's Sporting Goods, which owns Game Changer, and you're feeding into their retail media network and you're able to start using that data and analytics and that user profile to target those particular people. Because at the end of the day, this is the perfect audience to have your message in front of. It's engaged. It is from a target standpoint, it is exactly the person you're trying to reach. So it may not be the scale of running an ad on ESPN.com, but it's going to be a lot more targeted and a lot more beneficial to drive whatever result you're looking for, whether it's driving to a website, whether it's actually driving to purchase. So the advertising part of it, for me, coming from that world previously is really interesting and I'm looking to try to build as many type of monetization models as we can there.

Yeah, yeah. It seems when I hear like the, it's funny, it does actually work for the local person. Like, that's good, feel good branding. But, but to your point, it just doesn't scale. It's harder to sell to. But the media person hears that and thinks that, you know, these media, media ad networks and there's always been so much consolidation in media for exactly this reason. You know, if you earned one way back in the day, if you owned one local newspaper, that's great. But if you own 10 of them now, you get the attention of national advertisers.

And that's absolutely right.

I was, I was amazed, like Chuck Todd, of all people gave this interview a couple of, I don't know if you saw it a couple of months ago where he talked about high school and local sports being the future of journalism. And I think he was directionally accurate, but he was completely not understanding that, like, you guys exist. Right. He, he said, like, the local newspaper owns the right to these rights to these games. And I'm like, no, no, no, they don't. There's, there's companies. Yeah, yeah. So he had the right idea, but I think he thinks it's going to save newspapers. And it's like, no, it might just be like a whole different ad business. Business.

That's exactly right. I do think there's a whole new ad business that we just need to figure out the right way to monetize it. But, but once we do, there will definitely be Interest there from, from. From a national advertising standpoint.

Yeah. It's something I like to ask everybody who comes on. What are some other companies that you admire in the space individually as a company? They could be your partners or not. But like, who else do you think is. Is operating well, doing things the right way? You know, try to share the love a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a ton of. I'll go two directions on this. First and foremost, I think what PlayOn and NBC are doing is really great. I mean, Play on is a great example of being able to, you know, and the MaxPreps acquisition is a great example of that. They had already had such a great hold on the high school market. And then to bring someone like Maps Preps in who is such a scale partner in the high school space and gives them the. Now, you know, we talk about monetization of advertising, gives them the opportunity to really leverage the eyeballs that, you know, what is it? It's probably more than 100 million uniques a month that, that Max Preps is getting able to monetize that, you know, you have every player. My son's a high school football player. He's on Max Preps multiple times a week. His head coach is in there putting their schedule in and putting the stats in and putting all the different information about the team in there. So they've done a really good job of being very strategic and having arms in a lot of different areas. Right. With Go Fan and being. Being able to do the ticketing part of it. And so I think that I really admire the way that they grown the business over the years and the way that they've been able to not only grow it from a, from a usage and a consumer standpoint, but from a revenue standpoint as well. And then similar to, you know, similar with NBC. I think some of the things that they're doing and the way that they're being able to leverage the youth market has been. Has been super impressive as well. And then one of the things I'm seeing on the platform side of things and what some companies are doing on the AI side in individual sports, sports. Vizio is a company that has a platform leveraging AI highlights, specifically really concentrating on basketball and volleyball right now. I think what they're doing is super impressive or tactics. I don't know if you know them. It's Tactix. They're doing a similar. They have a similar platform concentrating on football. So those are the types of, of companies that we're, you know, That I just think are doing some really cool things in the space as well.

Last one for you. So what's next? What's the next cool feature or tech in your guys space that is coming? Maybe it's not quite there yet. What do you guys think? Three, five years out, everyone's going to be using this and it's going to blow people's minds.

Yeah, it's a great question. I think some of the things that we're doing on the data and analytics side of things from a highlight standpoint, you know, one of the partnerships we had this year that I thought was really cool was with Cooperstown and the Cooperstown Village. As teams went in to register for the live streaming, we also gave them the ability to add a highlight package to their subscription. So not only were they able to live stream the games, but at the end of the tournament they were getting the highlights of their player throughout all the games that they played during the course of, of the weekend and the tournament. So things like that I think are just those value added services that we're adding to our capabilities that are giving the consumer that much better of an experience. We're also trying, you know, there's going to be some things that will be coming out in the press, in the press soon that I, that I can't talk about yet that I think will be really cool from a capability standpoint that we're adding to football. So we can't talk about it yet, but there are some cool capabilities that we're working on with play on that I think are going to be really, really impressive out in the field. So it's doing things like that and it's taking feedback from our consumers and our partners on some of the things that they're looking for. And then we go back and we talk to our team and it's like, okay, how can we develop this and how quickly can we do it and how, you know, can we make sure that it's top notch, top of industry, best in category? And then it's, you know, we're having brainstorms on a weekly basis on what we can be doing to add to the product mix, to add to the portfolio, to be more, you know, to just be that much more of a leader in the, in the space and to be that much more of a, of a better partner to, to our, you know, to the companies that we work with.

We'll, we'll look forward to getting the scoop on the football story.

Well, we'll talk about it.

Listen, before you go, why don't you plug, obviously plug the website, but anywhere where they can find you or the company or learn more. Like how, how would you like people in our audience to be able to get in touch with you guys or Pixelot?

Certainly Pixelot TV is the website and I think the website does a great job. Both of our fixed cameras, of our mobile cameras, there's lots of videos that show the capabilities, that show different highlights and that show all of the different ways that we can work with you. Certainly you can find me on LinkedIn to find me on all the socials on Instagram and Twitter. Rmd. Very active on socials. Love to, love to stay active there. So certainly would love to connect with, with any, any of you in, in any of those capacities as well. But this is, this has been great. Love, love chatting. Two months in, I think that I've gotten my feet wet. I'm definitely starting to learn, learning every day and, and it's been a great experience so far and I'm looking forward to, you know, I think really making us a name to be known in the space, a leader. I want to be positioning Pixelot as if there's something happening in the sports technology space. I want media outlets to be coming to us saying, hey, what is Pixelot's view on this? What do you guys think?

Yeah, listen, as someone who's new to space, I will say that I think you guys are already doing a good, have already done a good job of that and I imagine we'll only get better with you being here. But I, it, I started seeing you guys right away and I'm like, okay, these guys are a player and we need to, we need to talk to them. So.

No, I appreciate that.

Yeah. Listen, Rob, thanks so much for joining and yeah, we'll talk soon.

Kyle, thank you. Appreciate it.

All right, so that was Rob DeSalvo, president of Pixellot. Listen, if you enjoyed this interview, if you found it interesting, helpful or insightful, do me a favor, leave us a review. If you are using Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please give us a five star review. Leave a text review. If there's something you like or even don't like about the podcast review, put it in a review. Just the act of pressing five stars or four or one or whatever and interacting actually helps us with the algorithms, particularly on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Ditto goes. If you're watching this video on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to our channel, hit the notification bell and leave a comment. Again, any positive signals we can send to the algorithm will elevate it and show this content to other people who may be interested in the business of youth sports. And again, if you haven't Already, go to buyingsandlot.com, enter your email address subscribe to our free email that goes out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Thanks for listening to the show and we'll see you next time.