Sponix Tech Founder and CEO Mohammad Ali Abbaspour (left) and Mohsen Rajabi, Business Development Director for Sponix, during an interview with The Peninsula recently.
Doha-based Sponix Tech, which has developed the world’s first technologies on purely software-based immersive replay videos and real-time virtual advertisements during football matches, has been winning accolades. The company has been recently selected by Microsoft as the best startup in Asia and was also chosen as one of the five best companies in football innovation in Austria.
Sponix is a sports technology startup company that seeks to enhance the sports fan experience and provides solutions and services that help broadcasters, clubs and leagues, as well as advertisers in the sports tech industry to increase their viewers.
“Our immersive replay technology is the first technology in the world that can produce this kind of immersive content without any hardware in the stadium, it’s purely software based. There’s only one competitor in the world, which is a large US-based company that produces similar content. But they need about $8m to $10m installations in the stadium, such as 5K cameras, servers, and infrastructure to produce their content. But we’re entering the market without using any installations in the stadium. We just need the feeds, and we can make rich quality AI-based content for the football fans and sports audiences even while we are sitting in our office in Doha,” Sponix Tech Founder and CEO Mohammad Ali Abbaspour said in an interview with The Peninsula recently.
Sponix has completed its AI-based immersive replay technology last year, while its virtual ads technology was completed in September.
“Also, with the completion of our unique remote virtual advertisement technology, now we are also the only company in the world that can add virtual ads in live feeds in real time, without any need for staff or installations in the stadium,” Abbaspour added.
Sponix has won the Asia Startup Competition, along with two other winners, which saw the participation of about 100 startups from 22 different countries. The event was jointly organised by the Microsoft-powered Global Sports Innovation Center and Sport Singapore recently.
Sponix was also recognised as one of the five leading companies in football innovation, and has presented its technologies at the Future of Football Business Conference in Austria.
Most recently, the company has implemented its immersive replay technology in major competitions including the UEFA Champions League and worked with a number of clubs in Europe. The company has also conducted live tests on its virtual ads solutions with the English Premier League and UEFA last month.
In Qatar, Sponix, which is part of the second cohort of the Qatar SportsTech’s award winning Accelerator Programme, is also in close negotiations with the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy and the BeINSports.
Mohsen Rajabi, Business Development Director for Sponix, added: “Our team consists of 17 smart people who are experts in these new high-end technologies such as AI, machine learning, and image processing. And they are working with us to develop and maintain our technologies. We believe in combining technology with something that’s profitable not only for the market, but for the audiences’ passion for the sports. And we think that we are inventing new markets through our technologies”.
Without a doubt, the techpreneurs behind Sponix are very intentional about their mission to be a game changer in the sports tech industry. They not only seek to increase fan engagement, but also hope to create a new era for sports sponsorship as well. The company has also set their sights on the Qatari market. In March, the company moved their headquarters from the UK to Doha, with an aim to add value to the country’s growing sports industry and share their innovation to other local market players.
“It’s very interesting for us as a technology provider in the sports field to be here, especially with the ambition Qatar has for sports technology. Also with beIN SPORTS which is one of the biggest broadcasters in the world, and most especially the upcoming Qatar World Cup which is the main reason why we chose to be here. Qatar will have a very big role in the sports industry in the region and in the world. We think we can create and add big value for all these events. Our immersive replay and virtual advertisement technologies were initially for football, but now we’re finalising our solutions for tennis as well. And there are also a lot of tennis events in Qatar. Our technology is also very native to the Qatar National Artifical Intelligence Strategy, which also has sports as one of its main sections,” added Abbaspour.
