All of the cool kids don’t live and work in Silicon Valley.
A few of them, it turns out, work for a small Philadelphia startup called OneTwoSee that has developed a white-label, multiscreen application platform that can present a range of data and information that syncs up with live sports broadcasts. In addition to tabulating that information and turning it into visuals that can be displayed on smartphones, tablets and PCs, the system is also capable of overlaying or tying those features to IP-connected set-tops and smart TVs.
Although OneTwoSee isn’t big (it has 13 full-time employees now and expects to expand that to as many as 20 by the end of the year), it has already landed some big-name clients, including Fox Sports, NBC Sports, Canada’s TSN, YES Network, Comcast SportsNet and LG Electronics.
OneTwoSee is supporting live interactive components for Fox Sports for apps tied to its live coverage of Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and and college basketball.
The startup is also working with Comcast Cable, powering an interactive sports app coming to the MSO’s X1 environment. The two companies are being hush-hush about the specifics ahead of the launch, but it’s expected to debut on Comcast’s X1 platform sometime this fall.
OneTwoSee’s core competency is to take raw data, normalize it and then display it across multiple platforms. That data, obtained through partnerships with the media rights-holders, spans real-time game stats, predictive content and the ability to poll viewers and to tie in information culled from Twitter and other social-media outlets.
The idea is to create and present a “combined game-day experience” that adds depth to the broadcast, Chris Reynolds, OneTwoSee’s co-founder and CEO, said. “We can provide contextual data that provides a sort of digital sports color commentator.”
In addition to engaging viewers, OneTwoSee said its approach opens up fresh ad inventory and other forms of new revenue-generating opportunities. The LG/Bloomberg Sports “BSports” implementation for Major League Baseball on LG-made smart TVs, for example, is ad-supported, providing game preview information as well as in-game data, such as hitter-pitcher matchups that show where the pitcher should locate the next pitch based on the batter’s historic cold and hot zones.
OneTwoSee’s main competition comes from agencies that develop one-off apps for video partners, but it believes it has an advantage because its core approach allows for rapid customizations and the ability to roll out and “normalize” apps across browsers, smartphones, tablets and TVs.
The company, founded in October 2010, has raised about $3 million so far.
