Interview with Davide Ragazzi, CEO of Kama, the innovative platform for football data analysis.
“Where passion meets data.” So reads the pay-off of the institutional site of Kama, a platform dedicated to technical and management staff who work in the professional football industry. On the one hand, they have a passion for a sport practiced all over the world that knows no decline in interest; on the other, a passion for numbers and for analysis by a specialized team that has been able to make its services available to all stakeholders in the football world. Its services include a 360° platform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of staff’s daily work, including clubs, match analysts, video analysts, prosecutors, scouts, journalists, coaches, and more.
Kama.Sport is the result of the work of a pool of sports and technology experts such as computer engineers, physicists, data scientists and designers who work daily to support sports clubs to raise the physical, technical, tactical and executive level of athletes and staff. How do they do this? Through big data, machine learning, neural sciences, personalization and innovation.
Through Kama.sport you can:
Kama.Sport is a software and data science house that brings 4.0 industry in the field of football and sports.
- Kama is positioned in the selection, integration and customization market, proposing an all-in-one solution that allows the end user (staff, club, match analyst, video analyst, prosecutor, scout, journalist, coach …) access to and best use technologies.
- Kama’s mission is to fill the gap between the data world and the final user.
- The peculiarity of Kama is having engineered integrations and customizations, allowing to offer to the customer a customized, dynamic and fast service.
Kama’s business model is based on an annual or monthly subsciption. There are 5 main business lines in Kama:
- Kama Soccer for Club: a platform available to top football clubs. Some of our customers are Napoli, Cagliari, Sassuolo and Atalanta.
- Kama Soccer for Coaches and Staff: a platform and an app available to top coaches and football staff. Some of our clients are Pioli (Milan coach) and De Zerbi (Shaktar coach). Its peculiarities are portability (when a coach changes team, he brings his work with him), the integration of multiple data sources, customization on goals and the direct link between match analysis and video analysis.
- Kama Soccer for Fans: an app available on all stores (iOS and Android) that allows all supporters and fans to know something more about their favorite players and team. You can access over 120 competitions around the world thanks to directs, statistics, player comparison, teams, ranking, summary, clips, highlights…
- Kama Innovation Hub: Kama’s specialist consulting service. The entire team is available to develop ad hoc systems and large projects. Not just soccer. Two examples: Planet Win 365 and Mapei.
Below there are the Kama’s services available in an integrated way with subscription products:
KAMA.
The profile through which access all the services and technologies of the world of sport. Each user has access to a series of management features useful to organize and explore the best sports data concerning him. The recording and monitoring of the activities carried out, the integration and customization of all services, the statistical and technical support of our experts, make Kama; the number one technology consultant, always at hand and constantly evolving.
The services available on Kama. are: Analytik, Akademy, Skout, Tak, Videok. These five services are configured in different ways depending on the user and integrated in a single convenient solution.
ANALYTIK
The service of analysis and exploration of football data. The user communicates in very simple ways what he wants and the system responds with precise and useful views, graphs and outputs, customized on the configured objectives. The data collected and inserted together with the staff are many: physical, technical, tactical, medical and psychological. The analyst quickly accesses the results obtained from the analyses, shown through personalized paths.
These outputs can be used in different ways, for example to make operational decisions on how to plan and prepare workouts or matches.
AKADEMY
The service of youth management, affiliates and technical staff. Each football club has several youth teams. Professionals can have affiliated clubs both in Italy and abroad. A unique system that can monitor and communicate the guidelines to all the technical staff, depending on the category and level, becomes essential for the improvement of the players involved and the growth of the number of selected.
TAK
The football data collection service.
An app for smartphones and smartwatches to carry always with you, such as stopwatch and whistle, during training and matches. It has never been so easy to gather important information about exercises and interesting events, from which you can then do tests and video analysis. Tak’s data structure can be perfectly integrated with any other data source, both proprietary and third-party (for example Opta, Sics, Wyscout and Panini Digital).
SMARTKAM
The video collection service.
A smart, portable, convenient and easy to use camera. Technical staff, collaborators, reporters, scouts, anyone who needs to record a game or a training session can take advantage of the Kama camera. Light and safe, with an integrated tripod, it can be placed in any place. Resistant to any weather condition. Automatically record videos following the action of the game through innovative stitching technologies. The use is possible both locally, without internet connection, and in wired fields connected to the cloud. Thanks to Smartkam, cameraman and editing are no longer needed.
VIDEOK
The video analysis service.
The video is a very important fact in the world of football. Collecting the video of a workout or a game is the first step, but it is not enough. Videok allows you to realize very quickly highlights of events that you want to show to coach and players, very useful in the preparation of training and also to learn a certain movement. The service receives input from any data source: Tak, proprietary or third-party data.
SKOUT
The talent selection service.
Players and coaches are defined by physical, technical and tactical data, also by performance, results and videos. Easily querying a complete database and retrieving useful information to make often very important choices becomes a priority.
With Kama it is possible to combine technical, tactical, physical and medical data with training and match videos, to measure performance thanks to precise and predictive algorithms. With one big goal: to improve sports clubs from all points of view.
Hi Davide, it is a great pleasure to meet you and thank you for your time. Let’s get straight to the point: if I were a president of a football club, how would you introduce me to Kama.Sport?
The pleasure is mine, thanks to you. Are you a president of a top level football club (Serie A, La Liga, Premiere League etc)? In this case, I would present Kama this way: “How much do you spend every year on technology and innovation? From our analysis what you buy with this budget is largely unused or duplicated. What we propose is to invest this budget in Kama.sport. We are a group of experts in sports tech technologies, computer engineers, designers and data scientists, aligned on all the industry news h24 and 7/7. We integrate all the types of data from the world (events, positional, physical, athletic, medical, video …). We select the best according to your goals. We customize the solution by offering it in an all-in-one platform tailored to your needs. The investment budget for you will be the same, if not less”.
The core business of football clubs (and sports in general) is linked to the buying/selling of players and the achievement of seasonal goals. Although technology is becoming increasingly important, the football club is not a software and data science house. For this reason you must rely on Kama.sport. In addition, to really exploit the potential of Industry 4.0, a tailor-made platform is needed. For this reason you should rely on an integrator and customizator, and not on a provider of data and services. Kama’s strength is to have engineered integrations and customizations, and this makes all feasible and far-reaching.
How and when was the idea born?
The idea was born on the occasion of the first Hackaton match analysis in the world of football organized in Italy by FIGC. I (computer engineer, founder, current CEO and COO), Carlo Bertelli (Doctor of Physics and Finance, founder, current CSO and CFO) and Nicola Bosio (computer engineer, founder, current CTO and CIO), who already knew each other for other past work together, participated curious to know and we immediately intuited what is still at the base of Kama.Sport: the problem is not the data, but the fact that these data are not used. In this way we designed Kama, a reality that sits on the end user’s side and allows him to access what he needs.
To give two examples in other areas: we are not an airline (eg. Lufthansa), we are Skyscanner (the app that integrates all airlines and allows the user to select the best flight for his needs. We are not a hotel chain (e.g. Western Union), we are Trivago.
How many months/years of study and design did it take to create the platform?
In the Kama.Sport roadmap the R&D phase runs from October 2017 to September 2020, considering that until 13/06/2019 (the date of birth of the company Kama.Sport Srl), the work was not full time. This time has allowed us to create a unique and innovative infrastructure, which really makes the difference: when Kama has to realize a customization, it does not start from a blank page, but configures a system that can offer this customization, This allows Kama.Sport to be highly scalable and to have great margins. The truth is that R&D work continues and will always continue in parallel with commercial activity, because otherwise you cannot be innovative.
Why did you choose football for your business?
Kama makes services and products for all sports and also for related markets: finance, betting, insurance, e-sports … Right now the focus is definitely on football. Football is the most popular sport in the world, especially in Italy and Europe. The budgets available are very large. We focused on brand reputation, which is why we focused on top level football at this early stage.
Besides this “market” reason, there is a more “scientific” reason. Football is a situational sport, not repetitive. The fundamental events (the goal) happen a few times and the variables are many. Doing meaningful data analysis was almost impossible before 2018 because we didn’t have technologies. So it’s very challenging for us to work in football, because we really believe that we can make the difference thanks to our innovations.
How’s the market reacting?
Very good! Some of our clients are: U.S. Sassuolo, Stefano Pioli (Milan coach), Roberto De Zerbi (Shakhtar coach), SSC Napoli (of which we are unique suppliers), Cagliari Calcio, U.S. Grosseto, Cristian Bucchi (Triestina coach), Giacomo Filippi (Palermo coach), Planet Win 365, Corax Company, Ivan Ljubicic, Infinity Global Sport and One of Us. The interest in the data and about the trend are evident. The challenge is to be there and work in the right way. And I have no doubt that Kama is doing it at its best.
How did you launch your project? Did you use crowdfunding campaigns?
No crowdfunding campaign (we may be interested later in developing the BTC business line). The financial roadmap of Kama.Sport Srl is as follows:
- 13/06/21 first round. Birth of Kama.Sport Srl. Evaluation 2,5mln. We gave 11%. Private financing.
- 04/08/21 second round. 3mln evaluation. We gave 6.5%. Private financing.
- 06/04/21 round A step 1. Rating 21mln. We totaled an x7 in less than a year. We gave approximately 3.09%. Private financing.
- Right now we are finishing round A with the second step.
- By the end of the year. Keeping the rating at 21mln. Collecting 1.4mln giving approximately 6.91%.
Kama provides data to improve the area of talent scouting in football. How important is it today in Italian football to rediscover the importance of this “sector” and how useful can technology be in this sense? Curiosity: is there already in circulation some Kama champ?
Yes, one of Kama’s services is Skout. Skout allows, thanks to millions of data events and videos, to scouting 4.0. A particularly useful feature is to be able to select similar players with a very high degree of reliability. This is possible thanks to the Kama.Index, the Kama proprietary index that is not based on z-score (classic method), but uses algorithms and patented technologies, which lead to unique results. Scouting is a very important activity. But even more important is to do good scouting. To do this in the best way, we need objectivity and meritocracy. Data and technologies make it possible to achieve an increasingly high level of efficiency and effectiveness. The final word is always from the expert, who is able to make the final choice. But using a sophisticated tool like Kama certainly helps, and a lot.
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