While a lot of New Year Resolutions might be coming to an early end for a lot of people, this doesn’t seem to be the case for Rapsodo. The company is off to a great start for 2021 in the Sports Analytics Patent Forecast® with four (4) patents being published as of March 24th. This number already makes 2021 one of Rapsodo’s best years of patent activity, tying its total number of published applications for 2020 and 2019 combined. Not only is this increase in number a promising sign for the future of Rapsodo, but the content of the patents also shows Rapsodo might be interested in implementing some exciting features into its existing platform.
Specifically, an application published in early February detailed a method Rapsodo is developing to measure the heart rate of multiple moving subjects using nothing more than a camera.
While the patent data is exciting in itself, it gets even more promising for Rapsodo when this is paired with some of its recent market activity. On March 24th, Rapsodo entered a partnership with Realplay, a Boston-based startup that provides in-game footage of every swing, pitch, or play of every player on the field, automatically. The two companies are collaborating in an effort to fully integrate Rapsodo’s existing video analysis techniques for baseball such as swing and pitch analysis into the automatically generated in-game video. Combine this with the sheer number of pitches, players, and swings in a baseball game and the data made available through this partnership becomes even more impressive.
The partnership seems to first be targeting amatuer markets such as high school and showcase baseball tournaments in an effort to provide amateur players with the same data provided in the big league, but the opportunity opened through this partnership extends far beyond that. While Realplay doesn’t own any patents within the Patent Forecast®, the company does seem to have a solid customer-base, partnering with multiple premier events, making this partnership even more promising for Rapsodo as its technology will likely be implemented in thousands of ballparks around the U.S. This in combination with the recent uptick of patent activity puts Rapsodo in a position to have a stellar year, and possibly gain the attention of some other companies in the sector while doing so. Subscribe to the Sports Analytics Patent Forecast® to see what other companies might be gaining an edge this year!