Because of that, next week’s SBJ Tech newsletter on Tech Week will hit your inboxes Thursday, which is hopefully more than enough time for me to land back in North Carolina and mainline some coffee after a busy few days.
I now hand this newsletter off to my younger tech teammate, Rob Schaefer (Joe Lemire is the older tech teammate, respectfully), for a look at a mapping tool for venues.
Mappedin's digital maps help fans with wayfinding and venue operators with security and operations. Mappedin
Hongwei Liu, co-founder and CEO of the indoor mapping firm Mappedin, says he undertook his first map-making project while anengineering student at the University of Waterloo in 2010.
“I made the bench for varsity badminton and decided I’d rather do something else,” Liu joked with SBJ. “The project I embarked upon with my friends was to map the indoors — to map the campus — to help people find classes and events. Every first year [student] has had the same experience [navigating campus].”
Sixteen years later, his company Mappedin has helped create digital maps of the interiors of more than 10,000 venues for more than 350 enterprise clients, ranging from malls (like Simon Property Group developments) and airports (think LAX and Miami International) to sports stadiums (such as Lumen Field and Energizer Park). The company has raised $35 million over the years, with the latest installment a $24.5 million Series B that Edison Partners led in April.
“A theme we’ve been thinking about and trying to solve for a while is how do you operationalize the physical world, and how do you digitize critical infrastructure?” said Ryan Ziegler, a general partner of Edison Partners. “That led us to [Mappedin], and when we saw what they built, we understood it would democratize [having a] source of truth to run operations indoors.”
Liu estimates one-third of Americans interact with Mappedin maps every year, but he is particularly bullish on the company’s growing sports practice, which now counts more than 50 clients. Here, Mappedin specializes in providing services such as personalized wayfinding for fans and security and operations assistance for venue operators.
“We think of it as an operating system for buildings,” Liu said. “It’s the same map that powers the front of house and the back of house, and it all works together.”
A category all its own
The idea of creating “digital twins” of venues is not new to the sports industry (see, as one example, OnePlan, previously named one of SBJ’s 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies).
Liu pitches Mappedin as a different category, particularly in its ease-of-use and cost.
Mappedin’s core technology is a custom-built computer vision model that transforms 2D floor plans into interoperable, 3D maps. Once the models create the base layer, those maps can be manually edited by users — “We built a tool my mother should be able to use,” Liu quipped — or augmented by plugging in external data sources like security cameras, staff schedules or smart door locks. Liu refers to this aggregation as “sensor fusion.”
“You start to paint the map of what’s happening in real time,” he said. “And we’re doing this in a way that isn’t trying to do anything against personal privacy. It’s more — hey, someone slipped and fell in that corridor. It’s not ‘Camera 17,’ and someone has to figure out what that means. It’s right there. Somebody just fell. Who’s our nearest person to go help that person out?”
Fans get a different perspective. Mappedin’s Lumen Field map appears on the venue’s website (and Seahawks’ mobile app) and offers a navigation function that works similar to Google Maps. Search the route from Lumen Field’s North Parking Lot 2 to Section 109, and the map will show a green walking trail supplemented by detailed directions: take the stairs up the main concourse, exit the stairs and head left, walk straight for less than a minute and then hang a right at Dippin’ Dots.
“Every building, every venue in the world — where Google Maps stops, it is still a black hole,” Liu said, adding that this challenge is exacerbated by how much more often the interior of buildings change than their exteriors.
Liu declined to comment on Mappedin’s pricing, but he characterized the process of creating one of its operating systems as costing in the five figures (which he claimed is “100x” less expensive than it typically costs to create a full-scale digital twin). Mappedin also offers its map-making model as a direct-to-consumer app, so that anyone can sample it.
“We want to show, not tell,” Liu said. “We’re the new kids in most industries where we show up, and we’re really confident that we have something different.”
Mappedin can get you from the offramp and into the parking lot and then your seat. Mappedin
The fourth annual SBA: Tech awards are Monday in New York City. Marc Bryan-Brown
I speak for the whole SBJ Tech crew when I share some serious excitement for next week in New York City. We have the SBA: Tech ceremony Monday evening, then two days of SBJ Tech Week programming, followed by the biggest celebration of the sports industry on Wednesday evening: Sports Business Awards.
We wanted to highlight all the wonderful sports tech companies that will be recognized and lauded for their respective work.
10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies
We’ve now had four cohorts of 10MI companies, and this one might be the most diverse yet. The group spans performance analysis, league operations, officiating, scheduling, sales and inclusivity:
Also, here is a quick rundown of all our SBA: Tech categories. The ceremony will culminate in a Sports Technology of the Year award, chosen from the companies winning in each category.
Lastly, here is the full list of Sport Business Awards finalists, which includes the likes of AWS as a potential sports sponsor of the year, as well as others that often pursue constant innovation (like candidates for the Best in Sports Media).
ALT Sports Data named Better CollectiveCEO/Canada and SVP/Strategy and M&A JAKE CASSADAY as CEO. Co-founder JOE DUNNIGAN will transition into the role of CCO.
WolfCycle hired former NFL Account Manager/Club Business Development ALLISON TAYLOR as chief of staff.
Hawk-Eye Innovations promoted Managing Director BEN CROSSING as CEO.
GameChanger named VIVEK BEDI as chief product and technology officer.
Agilitek Solutions added DANIEL BANKS as VP/marketing services. Banks most recently served with Leap Event Technology as VP/digital marketing solutions.
Novig elevated Chief of Staff TOREY KORSUNSKY to chief business officer.
Cisco and the USGA extended their longstanding technology relationship for an additional five years and are plotting new, AI-focused initiatives together, my SBJ Tech teammate Rob Schaefer reports.
Schaefer also writes that Bond Sports, a provider of management software for athletic facilities, signed a deal with Toca Football to help manage the programming at its soccer training centers in the U.S.
The NBA and AWS revamped the way fans can follow along with the NBA Draft Combine, which started Sunday and runs throughout the week.
Cosm and Fox Sports made a deal to bring 40 FIFA World Cup matches to Cosm’s three shared-reality facilities in L.A., Dallas and Atlanta, my SBJ colleague Austin Karp reports.
