I wonder if the Catapult dashboards are as cool as whatever this systems is that the Dallas Mavericks use in the NBA.

Not sure if these basketball heat maps are made from wearables.....

Those stats look like they're all about ball placement @topowl so I'm guessing they're all based on the touchscreen backboard that he's throwing the ball at - the one that displays the stats around the graphic of the hoop. Nothing there that would be based on wearables that I can see.

hi @Hackofalltrades

I last did a valuation for Catapult 3 months ago (see here), and came up with $1.66. So it is still below my (very rough) estimate of fair value.

I think you could capture a lot of data just from a visual feed, but you wont get a lot of the data the wearables collect (eg. impact force, heart rate etc).

ah yes, I get what you mean @Hackofalltrades

My take is that management's claims of sustainably passing the profitability/cash flow inflection points are a lot more credible now -- they seem to have genuinely curtailed cost growth while sustaining good revenue momentum.

Another set of results which show that this is a reasonable perspective would likely prompt me to further raise the valuation. Any genuine operating leverage could see profit improve significantly from here.

I like you thinking @BigStrawbs70 that CAT's moat could be built on the data they have collected and own, hence the 'replacement cost' of this moat would keep competitors on the outside.

However, I recall this data ownership issue being raised with management a few years ago and my understanding was that the athlete data is owned by the teams that 'own' the athletes and is considered a key piece of the team's IP. But I'm going off memory so could be mistaken, or things could have changed.

I've not followed CAT for years having sold out a while ago, so I'm not sure if CAT have anonymised this data to build out an unparalleled library or if they somehow re-negotiated their contracts to now own / part own the athlete's data?

Does @Strawman or other CAT fans know if they now own the library of athlete's data (anonymised or otherwise) and if this is a potential source of moat?

Disc: Not held.

Hi @Slomo, I'm pretty sure they own the data (albeit anonymised). At least that was the case historically.

I'm actually trying to tee up a meeting with Will, so hopefully we can get some clarity there.

To my mind, it's a definite competitive advantage in building and refining the analytics. Also it's a network effect moat in the sense that players are regularly traded and you want to use the platform that is most widely used.

Happy to be corrected if others have a different understanding.

I’m almost certain Catapult would own the data, but yes according to data privacy regulations it would probably be anonymised.

Google purchased Fitbit and no matter what they say a large part of that is for the data.

Sure it’s anonymised but that does little to affect its value.

the big companies are making a big move into healthcare data and services as new possible revenue streams since the device market may be maturing or at least slowing down (my guess).

Only a fraction of healthcare is actually done in hospitals and medical institutions so the emerging market will be in breaching that gap between medical institutions and homes with devices and data services. The big companies are pretty thirsty for the sector.

All imo only.

(unfortunately you can’t half tell I did data ethics at uni last semester…lol).

That is certainly my understanding as well.

The FAQ page touches on this under the heading of "WILL I LOSE MY DATA IF WE CANCEL OUR SUBSCRIPTION?": https://onesupport.catapultsports.com/hc/en-us/articles/7443888651535-FAQs-Membership

That said, would certainly be great to hear it from the horse's (aka: Will) mouth to make 1000% sure.

They have always been a bit opaque about what the arrangement with the data is. That FAQ answer is not really equivocal. It reads as though you own the data but will have no simple way of accessing it without the CO dashboard. That doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to get around if you really wanted to at the individual level, but obviously the moat is in having league wide data not individual users. A different set up to say accounting software.

WILL I LOSE MY DATA IF WE CANCEL OUR SUBSCRIPTION?

If you cancel your membership, you will lose access to the Catapult One dashboard. To regain access, you'll need to re-activate your membership by making a payment.

Going way, way back to the prospectus it was also pretty opaque. But to me it suggests the user owns the data but CAT has what I guess could be described as an "easement" on the data.

Under its standard commercial arrangements with clients, Catapult retains the right to utilise data obtained from its products on a de-identified basis for a range of commercial applications.

IIRC, the AFL was intent on ditching Catapult back in 2015 for a device/software they part owned and the clubs revolted because they were going to lose all their data because of compatability not ownership.

These were my notes on Data Ownership from the 31 Jan 2023 meeting with the then-CFO Hayden Stockdale:

DATA OWNERSHIP

• Data is owned by the team’s
• CAT has the right to use the data to improve its algorithms on an anonymous basis
• Teams do not have the right to monetise the data without CAT consent - this is to ensure that monetisation is not used in a way which competes with CAT
• Data is not interesting to a 3rd party unless it is for the whole league - teams are more interested in winning, it is the leagues that are more interested in the data as they care about eyeballs, fan engagement etc

The last bullet is key and for me, where the moat is - within and between teams, as well as the league overall.

@Strawman, thanks for the clarification.

A couple of adjacent questions (I will ask Will when he's next on) would be:

1) Do the team / subscriber retain ownership of the historic data if they were to not renew their subscription. If so, they could more easily transfer to an alternative provider (even though it's probably not a seamless exercise)?

2) Does a subscriber gain access to a players historic data if they sign that player from another club that used CAT? (i.e. CAT would transfer player history collected elsewhere to the new subscription that player becomes a part of)

Just trying to circle the wagons on their moat.

A key reason I divested in the past is that a lot of teams seemed to have multiple data providers in addition to CAT which suggested that CAT might not have much pricing power.

I'm now thinking that is less of a concern as they have grown to 5x the size of their nearest competitor.

An enduring concern is that some of this growth has been acquired, not (just) the result of beating competitors.

I read Catapults privacy policy and am not too ruffled.

To be honest, it's all a little murky, but that's the norm globally.

Remember, it's not just Catapult and the end club/user, there's third party data processors that catapult use as well.

To be practical, they all need the data, and probably keep loads of it on server permanently, no matter what they say.

It might be anonymised, or maybe it's not. Google have said data has been anonymised then gone and lost 40 million+ customers personal data in breaches before.

Remember anonymisation isn't a reality, all data can be re-identified reasonably easily anyway.

You can take government publically available medicare data-sets, combine it with other data sourced elsewhere, and ultimately re-identify people lickety-split.

They seem to have specific deals with clubs/customers, and consent as usual is a key part of the agreements. So clubs are obviously asking to be in some sense the owner of the data....but that's murky as well because it obviously goes through catapult and other third partys hands.

Also legislation is really quite varied around the world.

The U.S data legislations varies from state to state and isn't as strong as Europes GDPR or Australias privacy act (which is catching up as we speak).

Anyways, it's obvious with a reasonably concentrated professional customer base it's in catapults best interest to be responsible stewards of the data.

If there is a future revenue stream from historical data, they'll probably be all over it like spider-monkeys (i hope) and will find a way to use it, even if they have a deal that the club quote and unquote is the "owner"...

Just a few thoughts....

I agree @topowl

On your 2nd question @Slomo, I believe the answer is yes. Certainly, at least, where there are league-wide arrangements.

Oh I missed that, thanks for sharing @Remorhaz

Also trying to line up a meeting with Will for our members.