An innovative and unique way to scout fresh talents

The coronavirus pandemic left the sporting world to a standstill for more than three months. While European football has seen light at the end of tunnel, other sports are also gearing up for resumption with new SOPs and health protocols in place. While international sports have the backing of strong finance and state-of-art facilities, there is still an uncertainty to how and when sports at semi-pro or amateur level will commence.

With travel restrictions and social distancing guidelines in place, there is a huge question mark to how scouts will work following the resumption of semi-pro and amateur sports, where the talents are unearthed.

SPORT.VIDEO started its platform to provide the best quality video highlights and footages from matches at grass-root levels with an aim to provide user-created content where players and entities can themselves share their profiles and videos for the ease of the scouts and sports fanatics. However, the COVID-19 has brought a certain level of uncertainty with it in relation to the resumption of sports at school, colleges and semi-pro level.

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"The sports industry has evolved during the COVID-19 period"

“The sports industry has evolved during the COVID-19 period. We at Sport.Video believe that with our easy and user-friendly broadcasting interface all the users, fans and players will have better access to their sports footage. The fans are and will be a bit sceptic to attend the games in person, given the stringent social distancing norms in place. Therefore, Sport.Video offers new opportunities to the content creators as well as to the community which is happy to follow the content. With almost zero costs the users can attract a large spectrum of their fans and engage with potential new ones as the content being produced by Sport.Video app can reach a larger audience viz social media sharing and increase the value of the sport in general,” Ashish Sharma, designated partner at SPORT VIDEO LLP told WION.

With no sporting event at the grass-root level, organisations providing videos and scouting help through their portals have been affected massively. However, with the sporting world easing up in Europe, people are coming back to normalcy with bigger value than ever before.

When asked what sort of impact has the shutdown brought with itself, Ashish said: “Of course, when the governments do not permit any sporting events and also the amateurs and semi-professionals are not venturing out due to the pandemic, it definitely reflects in the number of views and visitors. Sport.Video has been impacted like most businesses. Some of the major grass-root level tournaments in India have been cancelled for this year. Sports is making a comeback, especially in Europe, where we are already seeing and measuring that there is much more interest and visits on the platform, as people appreciate new digital platforms and understand that sport has a bigger value than ever before. We are definitely looking forward to this change to happen in India as well. The full automatization process on our platform allows any user to stream their games in real-time and in a very useful way. The users do not have to spend any money on broadcasting their games, especially when the clubs and sports entities do not have adequate budgets and resources.”

Travel restrictions may bring scouts to video platforms in a bid to unearth new talents and it could be a feasible way to spot a youngster than travelling everywhere during the time of the pandemic.

“The level of scouting will definitely increase in the near future. As the countries are still closed, the scouting agents will definitely use more content generated from online solutions than travel in person. It’s also a very cost-effective way as it saves time, money, energy etc. Sport.Video solution offers a valuable solution for all parties involved within the scouting process. Sports entities can easily: create their content; the players can share it on their profiles and work with the videos; the scouts can easily access them just by clicking on the link. Our mission is combined with presenting amateur and semi-pro athletes in the same way as the pros,” Ashish continued.

“The main goal of our platform is to support the amateur and semi-pro sport around the world. We do not provide only a real-time technology with almost zero costs to the user, but with our future developments, we are going to create a new sports broadcasting ecosystem with attractive features for B2B and B2C. On the other hand, we support each user by providing Sport.Video as a new communication tool and a revenue generator. Every user is able to use our premium features which engage with their viewers and fans,” he added.

With sports starting to unlock itself in many countries with others following suit, it is likely that the new norm will bring the scouts and talent spotters to the video world as the world of sports continues to evolve.