Dick’s Sporting Goods is expanding its digital tools with the acquisition of GameChanger Media, the company behind the mobile scorekeeping app of the same name.
A sporting goods company (with 675 locations across the United States) might not seem like an obvious buyer of tech companies, but it’s been building up its suite of digital products for youth sports — which it calls Dick’s Team Sports HQ — thanks to recent acquisitions of Blue Sombrero and Affinity Sports.
GameChanger, meanwhile, says it’s used by 165,000 amateur baseball and softball teams to track scores and stats for individual players — which also means allowing friends and family to follow the game from afar, and helping coaches understand how each player is doing.
According to GameChanger CEO Ted Sullivan, this is a lot more challenging than you might think.
“We actually like to say that we’re solving some of the hardest problems in sports broadcast,” he said. “The problem of one game with 1 million followers much easier than 10,000 games [simultaneously], with a handful of followers for each one.”
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. GameChanger investors include John Stanton of Trilogy Equity Partners, Dan Levine of Tenfore Holdings, Message Labs founder Jos White and Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures.
Looking ahead, Sullivan said GameChanger will continue to operate out of its Manhattan offices, and he will continue to serve as CEO. At the same time, the company will be able to expand to more sports (it currently supports baseball, softball and basketball) and more platforms (the scorekeeping app is currently iOS-only).
“We believe the addition of GameChanger and its unique in-game mobile experience to Dick’s Team Sports HQ strongly supports our efforts to provide unparalleled technological capabilities to youth and prep teams and leagues across the country,” said Dick’s Chairman and CEO Edward W. Stack in the acquisition release.