It’s no secret that baseball teams, like many sports, already utilize video and data to inform training and strategy. And while there is no shortage of data and companies who serve it up, Chris Clark, a former college athlete turned entrepreneur, saw an opportunity to bring it together as a winning combination in the form of AWRE Sports.
“We ingest video and data from any source—an iPad, an installed camera, a radar gun, a bat sensor—and put it all in one place,” explains Clark, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “That way, you can look at the entire game experience online with one click.”
From the College Baseball Field to the Sports Startup Scene
Before he was developing game-changing software for college baseball, Clark was playing the game himself. As a former Division I player, Clark spent his three years at South Carolina’s Wofford College on the baseball field. That passion for the game would bring Clark together with his AWRE Sports co-founders, including Steve Johnson, his former college roommate and the manager of a New Jersey-based baseball training academy. Johnson also played on the Wofford College team with Clark.
Clark is a physics program graduate and self-taught developer who stepped into the sports technology realm on a wholesome whim in 2012. He first jumped at the opportunity to create a software solution for his wife and former assistant golf coach at Vanderbilt University, Holly Clark. This led to the launch of BirdieFire, a golf-focused analytics company.
Following the success of BirdieFire, Clark turned his attention back to baseball. He worked on developing a predictive spray chart model that caught the attention of numerous college baseball programs. The very next year, Clark launched AWRE Sports, originally dubbed PitchAware.
Johnson’s former business partner, Rob Corsi, later joined the AWRE Sports team as a co-founder and chief operating officer. A graduate of Rutgers University, Corsi played baseball for his college team before going pro in Australia for several years. The leadership team also includes chief technology officer Dave Johansen and chief sales officer Ken Spangenberg.
Advancing How America’s Favorite Pastime is Watched and Played
“We partnered with a bunch of different baseball venues along the way as we tried to develop the right tools,” Clark recalls. “It resulted in us building this robust set of features and video system that actually provided usable insights for the teams using it.”
The platform leverages artificial intelligence, machine learning, skeletal tracking, and live streaming to give college baseball teams prognosticate insights. The AWRE Sports system utilizes six cameras to cover the baseball field, strategically placed to capture every angle of the game.
A centerfield camera, a camera above home plate, and two more cameras on each dugout film both the hitter and pitcher from their open and closed sides. Clark states that the system is currently installed at more than 100 locations nationwide.
The Future of Baseball Technology and Sports Analytics
AWRE’s technology analyzes a player’s metrics and real-time performance to help coaches understand where and how a batter might hit. It automatically captures video clips of every pitch and swing, offering players and coaches alike powerful insights to uplevel their game. An early client of the platform, Oregon State University credits AWRE Sports for providing the “critical information that helped us win the Division I NCAA National Championship.”
In addition to AWRE’s trademark camera system, the company is making its technology more mobile-friendly. Through the AWRE app, fans can stream any AWRE-enabled game with ease. The app lets viewers toggle between cameras and view the metrics of each pitch or swing in real-time.
“A lot of the other video solutions out there are made for other sports—football or soccer, for example—with a one-angle view,” points out Clark. “But for the nuances of baseball and softball, one angle doesn’t cut it. What our team can deliver is a multi-angle solution with usable insights. And it’s the only one in the space.”
With over 100 installed camera systems nationwide, the AWRE platform is already on its way to changing how sports are watched and played. Experience the AWRE Sports perspective at awresports.com.
