New Markets and New Technology Put Pointstreak on a Roll
For many people in Chatham-Kent, Pointstreak is a website they visit to get up to the second scores from their local Junior B and Junior C hockey and lacrosse teams.
Pointstreak, who’s CEO Scott Secord hails from Ridgetown, is known for their real time scoring of hockey and lacrosse games across North America and Europe; however, the sports technology company has an ever growing portfolio of sports applications and tools to help athletes, teams and leagues.
Recently, Pointstreak stepped out of their niche markets of hockey, lacrosse, and baseball, and grabbed another major client, the National Basketball League of Canada, something CEO Scott Secord calls a major step for his company,
“It gives us the opportunity to showcase our platform with the NBL and hopefully that will open some doors.”
“This our first basketball league doing the full suite of stats. This is our real entrance into pro level basketball,” Secord said, and added that he hopes this contract will expose Pointstreak to new opportunities in the basketball world.
“I hope this opens opportunities with the National Basketball Association D League. We have interest in persuing that, and certainly there are a lot of different leagues overseas we’re going to explore. Basketball is huge in several countries over there.”
It isn’t simply other sports, or new markets such as Europe, where Pointstreak recently signed on a number of leagues, it’s adding a variety of services and new technology to the Pointstreak portfolio that is helping them reach new heights and provide better coverage for leagues and teams.
Pointstreak’s development of STEVA, an innovative, instant catalogue of sports video, and Cardinal Sports Management, a company Secord built, with the Chatham Maroons as his first clients in the early 1990’s, stand out as two highlights for the company.
STEVA is video software married to Poinstreak’s real time statistics, meaning coaches and scouts can bring up every goal, assist or save a player makes by searching the video system without sifting through hours of film. Even better, these video clips are available within a minute of the play online, and in less than 4-minutes on a mobile device.
Cardinal Sports Management helps athletes earn scholarships in the US and Canada. It creates athletic prowp-content/uploads of players, and provides academic information including transcripts and SAT scores. With the integration of STEVA, Cardinal has the ability to maintain video indexed highlights of every player on their system to share with scouts and recruiters.
Currently, several Chatham Maroons players have Cardinal prowp-content/uploads, and all GOJHL players are allowed to create prowp-content/uploads in the system.
According to Secord, this technology is an integral part of the NHL’s talent identification and scouting processes,
“We have a relationship with the NHL Central Scouting Bureau where we feed data to them, and provide indexed video of players. Our relationship with the NHL is more for scouting and talent identification.”
Ever growing, Pointstreak is no logner simply a Canadian leader in sports technology. With their rapid growth across the United States, and now into Europe, the business, which Secord says has several Chatham-Kent natives working at their head offices in Toronto, is becoming a worldwide sports technology leader.
When asked if this growth could include a Chatham-Kent office, Secord didn’t rule out the possibility in the future, expressing his interest in helping his home community, and stating the strong ties that many Pointstreak employees still have to Chatham-Kent.
“From a presence perspective we would have to grow in the number of leagues in the Chatham-Kent area,” said Secord.
“We’ve been in contact with many corporations across the country to help at the grassroots level. It’s no different than when we signed an agreement with the state of Texas. It would have to be an expansion of our coverage in Southwestern Ontario whether it be youth hockey, baseball, or in Michigan.”
For now, Chatham-Kent residents can be proud of the local connections this business has in the form of Secord and his staff, and can enjoy the real time scoring of local junior teams, as well as the opportunities and exposure Pointstreak is providing to local athletes through STEVA and Cardinal Sports Management as they live out their athletic dreams.