SBJ Tech: Genius Sports’ new CTO sees big growth opportunity

When I spoke to Mark Kropf earlier this week, he was five days into his time as the new CTO at Genius Sports. Kropf was in Las Vegas for meetings, and while we talked, the cursive logo of the Wynn peeked over his right shoulder.

Kropf sees Genius at an inflection point. The company has established itself as a data provider and rights holder for leagues and networks around the world. It's also navigated some key growth pains that come with tech development and acquisition growth. His mission, in part, will now look to build out capabilities and determine how to apply those more broadly to maximize the use of its products.

“It’s a long way from there, when you’re hanging fixtures from a stadium ceiling and the rest, but that’s a North Star for us,” Kropf said. “Make it easy as possible to consume our services. Scale them quickly. Make it transparent where, if you’re a league or sport with any scale, it just seems obvious to use Genius.”

Kropf, who spent nearly five years as technical director in the CTO office for Google Cloud, will be based in New York City and report to CEO Mark Locke. The Ohio native will oversee all aspects of tech for the company -- which will include IT, info security, tech operations and product builds. His extensive work with generative AI made him an ideal fit to oversee the growth of GeniusIQ, the company’s recently released AI-powered platform that will turn raw sports data into game analysis and immersive experiences.  

Mixing passion with nimbleness

Through that view into sports, he’s recognized an inherent advantage that comes with leading people at a place like Genius -- there’s a passion baked into the work that he hasn’t seen as much in other industries. He hopes to add a Silicon Valley-like nimbleness to the thought process to the Genius system -- building small teams that can move, fail and learn fast to capitalize on Genius’ positioning to address needs.

A key example of this is FanHub, a fan activation platform that debuted Monday to help advertisers reach the specific fan segments they’re looking to engage. “It’s so obvious that the journey of the sports fan is something that you can map out and kind of understand season-by-season dynamics [like the playoffs]. What are they a big fan of? What do they become a big fan of?” Kropf said. “These are things that can be well-described in software.”

Kropf’s GenAI work at Google resulted in some key learnings that he finds useful for any company (team, league, etc.) that has interest in using it: 

• Don’t be afraid of it

• Don’t bet your brand on it

• Be curious

• Explore its use

• Rely on the pain points and how it can help you

Those pointers ultimately define his interest in Genius’ immediate focus and role it can serve now and in the future.

“I can't necessarily predict what next year's big hype cycle will be focused on, but what I do know is if I'm helping solve problems for my users and my customers, then I'm doing the right thing,” Kropf said. “So, I really want to make sure, as we kind of iterate and evolve the tech at Genius, is that we're always focused on what are we doing for the fan, what are we doing for the leagues, and how can we go and improve that experience?

“And I like that the portfolio is already aimed in that right direction.”

When the 2025 college baseball season starts in the spring, a new solution will arrive with it that seeks to provide a well-rounded scouting and analytics tool.

Pixellot and TruMedia  have partnered to create Tarantula, a system that will pair the former’s AI-manned cameras with the latter’s analytics and scouting platform. The duo, along with computer vision company Infinite Sky, will feature two versions of the product -- a seven-camera system (two cameras apiece on the pitcher and batter, a centerfield camera, a high home camera and a low home camera) and a two-camera system (centerfield and high home camera) -- to meet the budgets of both national powerhouse and less-funded programs.

Jeff Stern, president of TruMedia, said the company works with 24 of the 30 MLB teams. He’s often kicked around the idea of providing the same type of comprehensive, professional solution to the college level. TruMedia and Pixellot first engaged in initial talks about a potential collaboration two years ago, but the partnership conversation truly started in earnest last year.

"They have very high-quality players, very high-quality coaches, but a college team isn’t a technology startup like each Major League Baseball team is at this point,” Stern said of college baseball. “They don’t have the type of capacity to build all of their own models and develop their own internal sites and tools.”

TruMedia works with more than 200 D-I baseball programs. Pixellot partners with MLB and some collegiate summer leagues. The use of Pixellot’s Replay system provides more direct exposure to the college game, where the 2023 honoree of SBJ's 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies has approximately 20 connections to programs ranging from D-I to D-III.

The opportunity to work with TruMedia instantly resonated with David Shapiro, Pixellot’s president for North America. He is a former college baseball player who still has many connections in the sport. Shapiro said college coaches are piecing together the tracking data, video capture and clipping often from three different providers.

“That’s what really got me excited about this and made me want to do something with TruMedia,” Shapiro said. “What they’re bring to market is going to make the lives of these college coaches and college athletes a lot easier by having everything in one central place.”

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• In this week's Athletes Voice, SBJ's Joe Lemire interviews Allyson Felix about her motivations behind Always Alpha, the women-focused marketing agency she co-founded and launched this week -- and learns about the training tech she used during her Olympic career.

• The NFL expanded its relationship with Cisco to include cybersecurity protection of the league’s entire batch of international games, writes Lemire, including the recently played debut contest in Brazil as well as matchups in the UK, Germany and next year in Spain.

• Wimbledon will adopt Hawk-Eye’s live electronic line-calling (Live ELC) system at The Championships in 2025, notes SBJ's Rob Schaefer, bringing it in step with two of the other three tennis Grand Slams: the Australian Open and U.S. Open.

• Youth sports management solution TeamLinkt introduced a generative AI assistant called Emi into its platform to help streamline operational efficiencies. Emi is built with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 large language model, reports Lemire.