Thanks for your thoughts @strawman.

I thought of the question when reading an old interview with the CEO of Catapult and he was describing their real competitive advanatge as not being the device but actually the software and anayltics.....

I guess I thought the software side of things wasn't a great hurdle for an Apple or Google to overcome, however perhaps the elite sports segment isn't big enough game to be a priority for an Apple or Google.

Was interesting to see though the ACCC blocking the australian side of things for the Google purchase of Fitbit. They seemed to have quite a few concerns, one being Googles laser eyes for the future of the health data space. Considering the early stages of that market, they were concerned Google may stifle competition in an area that could really do with some innvoation e.g. public health.

Yeah, i'm with you there @topowl -- not much coding advantage to be had. That being said, these days it seems that it's more the proprietary data sets that offer the edge. That's the feedstock for the ML/AI side of things. With any luck, that helps catalyse a nice feedback loop ie. more data > better analytics > more users > more data > better analytics etc

The data itself can keep people in your walled garden and offer a slight network effect of its own. That is, players are frequently traded and junior leagues are the feedstock for the top tiers -- if you are going to acquire a player, and they have a specific data set, you'll want the platform that is compatible. In other words, if a majority of players/teams/leagues are using Catapult, why use another platform where that historical record is not compatible? Even outside of an individual context, coaches/trainers would see great value in using benchmarks collected across the biggest dataset.

There's a lot of things that have tested my conviction over the years, but the fact Catapult are 10x the size of their nearest competitor, and the nature of some of these emerging network effects has helped me stay the course.

Honestly, there's no denying its capabilities if the NFL teams are using it en masse. I think most people are aware those fellas are fanatical about fighting for every inch of advantage (Pacino/ Any Given Sunday reference..lol).

Hopefully they can expand across all sports and all levels including college .....all while building those network effects that any future competitor will find hard to overcome.

Catapult already dominate College Football with the top Teams (Schools) using their system. They also have focused on exclusive “whole competition rights” such rather than just chasing teams and are the go to system in most major elite sports. As they progress you can see their land and expand has slowly moved towards second and third offerings. So getting these teams to buy additional features and options. If they can move to cash flow positive by sealing 2nd system / feature tie ups then future features and offerings will be the profit on the top. The producer was a terrible foray. I think they can now see that if they can get a team or league into their system the long term profits will come from adds and feature upgrades.