A Ring of Smartphones Plus a Wearable Makes You the Star of Your Own Gameday Video

I spent many many hours shivering on the sidelines as my kids went through their elementary and middle school soccer careers. And while I did occasionally try to catch the moment on video, it rarely went well; I have a few blurry shots of missed kicks and none of anything you would put in a highlight reel. So startup Peeq, launching its video highlight system at Highway1 Demo Day in San Francisco this week, definitely got my attention. Even though at this point Peeq is focused on semi-pro and collegiate athletes not kids’ soccer, it’s easy to see how the system could quickly trickle down to the pre-teen athletics scene. Peeq’s system requires that each athlete who wants to be featured in a highlights reel wear a tracker—the company will sell these for a price yet to be announced. The athletes (or their parents) place mobile phones, running the Peeq app, on tripods around the field; a demo video used 14 phones and 100 trackers, but the system will work with far fewer. After the game, cloud-based editing software creates personalized highlight reels; Peeq plans to charge teams or venues subscription fees for the service. The company raised US $1.3 million to date and has been pilot testing the technology, it is working on pulling in another $3 million in investment to roll it out to sports teams.