How GameChanger Became the World’s #1 Youth Sports App

In one sentence, Game Changer is a happiness company. We connect you as mom and dad or grandma and grandpa to the most important game of the week, which is not the Super Bowl, uh is not uh a pro sports team playing. It's your kid or grandkid playing. We made a decision almost overnight to make a bet on video streaming. And like within a single business day, we made that decision. We kind of bet the future of the company on it. And to an extent, the rest is history. And so an 18-year-old who was an intern inspired us to find this way to build highlight clips. And so that that came out more so like you said into 2021 and 150 200 million highlight clips get created a year. The ability to watch those highlights, consume them, and share them. That's like the main ingredient of the rocket fuel that video has been for us. Welcome to Subversive, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps

in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category defining companies and innovative startups. Let's get into the show. This episode is brought to you by RevenueCat. The world's best apps use RevenueCat to power purchases, manage customer data, and grow revenue on iOS, Android, and the web. Join more than 100,000 apps that are already using RevenueCat to grow their businesses and track more than $10 billion in spend, including category leaders like OpenAI, Notion, and Ladder. Learn more at revenuecat.com/subversive.

My guest today is Samir Ahuja, president of Game Changer, which is the number one youth sports app in the United States used by millions of coaches, parents, and athletes to follow live games, track stats, and stay connected to their teams. In this episode, I talked to Samir about Game Changers evolution from a simple scorekeeping tool to a category defining platform for youth sports. About how Game Changers unique growth loop powered by live streamed games has propelled it to nearly 10 million active users and over 100 million in annual revenue. And about Samir's aspiration to continue expanding Game Changers platform beyond baseball and softball to additional sports like basketball, soccer, and flag football. All right,

welcome Samir to the Subversive podcast. Excited to be talking to you about Game Changer today, uh, which is the number one youth sports app in the country if I'm not mistaken, particularly with baseball and softball. And before we get too far into it, would love to just hear a little bit more about what Game Changer is for those who don't already know. >> Sure. Well, thanks Phil for having me on. I love talking about Game Changer.

In one sentence, Gamechanger is a happiness company. We connect you as mom and dad or grandma and grandpa to the most important game of the week, which is not the Super Bowl, uh is not uh a pro sports team playing. It's your kid or grandkid playing. And we do that through our app, which allows you to capture content, stats, scores, and video. And as a family, you can um watch it the way you would watch uh pro or collegiate sports.

>> Well, I'll say I have two daughters, Kinley and Lyanna, who are eight and six. and Kinley just got really into softball and so they're not using Game Changer yet, but I'm about to sell their coach on Game Changer, so I'm excited for them to start using it soon. Um,

let's talk a little bit more about your professional background. What did you do before you joined Game Changer in 2017? >> Sure. Well, including Game Changer, it's my fourth startup in a row. I started my career in management consulting and investment banking and quickly got the entrepreneurial bug and um have served as a founder, CEO, COO kind of in a core leadership position of four startups. Two fintech, one was actually sports and entertainment. Uh and then this one and then this is by far the longest thing I've done and the most uh exciting thing. I I wouldn't necessarily recommend four startups and four industries to anyone, but that was my career path. And I love learning new things and building new things, and I think that helped me come in here and um and really uh kind of get a chance to really go deep in youth sports.

>> Well, I'm with you. I started my career as a consultant and spent a few years in venture capital and and like you got the entrepreneurial bug and have mostly been doing that type of work since. But as you said, this has been your longest run. You've been at Game Changer over eight years now. >> So my understanding is you joined shortly after Dick Sporting Goods acquired Game Changer in 2016. You got brought in as VP of finance and analytics in 2017. What did the company look like when you first joined and how has your role evolved over these last eight years?

>> Yeah, it was a amazing company, amazing product, quite small relative to today. We had about 40 people and we had about a million users. uh very you know clearly product market fit in its core business. I was lucky enough to be introduced to the founders and uh I met with them and it was just two months after the acquisition by Dix and within 3 weeks of meeting them they uh we arrived at a alignment for them to make me an offer and and and I I saw an opportunity to just join a great team.

Honestly, the the role was secondary to the great product. I had been coaching my daughters. I have uh they're older now, but similar, you know, two or three years apart is like yours. And I loved coaching. And my biggest takeaway from that moment was sometimes you have to, you know, jump into the unknown. And I guess that's kind of an entrepreneur's uh mentality. I've been so fortunate because over the over that time uh at the end of a couple years uh there uh the founders had moved on. They' done an amazing job and they went on to do other things and I was asked by the Dick Sporting Goods team in 2019 to lead the business and I've been doing that since then and uh it has been just uh the most incredible you know career experience

I've ever had. So let's dive a little bit more into that story and let's start with the evolution of game changer from a simple scorekeeping app to now the largest youth sports platform in the US for scorekeeping live stream video and a number of other features. What did game changers product and team look like when you joined and what pain points were you already solving better than anyone else at that time? >> And to answer that I'll just say a little bit about the origin. And by the way, as an aside, I think if you come into an organization and you take over for the founders, you should be a student of history. You should talk to them and understand where the company came from. I spent a lot of time talking to early teammates who had departed. Of course, the founders, investors.

Fundamentally, post the launch of the iPhone and that era, the fundamental premise was digitize scorekeeping, which was a huge cultural thing in baseball to begin with, and make people's lives easier. So, they didn't have to go and calculate stats and erase things on a book. So, here you have a smartphone, you have an app, and you can digitize scorekeeping. That created a data stream that didn't exist as electronic data before then in the world, which was the flow of the game at Youth. And so that was able to be turned into a fan experience. Fast forward to 201617 at the time of the acquisition and when I joined that was the fundamental product and it was so cool of because of how powerful it was. It solved this fundamental need and pain point for coaches who were also there as as as you may experience if you coach like to help the kids, right?

especially as you go into younger ages, it's a little bit of, you know, like watching them and it's a little bit of babysitting almost and you have to >> you have to be there for the kids, you have to be there for the parents and um this was a thing that takes away from that. So we made it really really simple and um and I mean honestly to this day that's still a fundamental part of what we do. And so what have you done over

the last call it eight years to build on that foundation? What are some of the other features Game Changer has invested in to take it from scorekeeping to a much broader suite of of product offering? We've transformed the viewing experience and this I think has been driven by the fact that once we saw this stream of data and once we had a fan experience, we realized the fan and that's our internal word for the family members and people interested in the games, >> we could deliver an even better and better viewing experience. the coach was critical, but the fan was equally critical. So, you had kind of a two-sided um situation. So, as we focused more on the fan, we said, "Wow, we could make this experience a lot better." And the fundamental thing we did was combine the scoring, which was the origin capability with uh video. And now you had the ability to move towards a professional level quality video

experience. and and that I would say is less of a pain point solve for the coach. Although coaches do use the video for training of and and performance and all that for the kids, but just became about I can watch my kids in the way I would watch something else. And and it just took off. I mean we after we started it I mean it it became such that it now feels like in youth sports and we're not the only ones who who've delivered on this our whole industry as that watching your kids play on v you know a video is is is table stakes that's just become assumed many games haven't yet been covered and there's a lot of opportunity ahead of us but that we believe that's table stakes and no different than you just assume years ago you assumed you could watch your local pro team on TV today. You assume or for many years you can watch any pro team, any collegiate team on streaming. Now the assumption is I can watch any of my

kids games in any sport, >> in any level of play. So a long way to go for that to be the case, but it's clear that that we can get there. >> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and we're going to come back to the importance of video streaming in a moment when we talk about the CO 19 pandemic and the impact that had on youth sports and on game changers business. But in the meantime,

I'd love to talk a little bit more about this two-sided network that you brought up, right? You've got coaches on the one side, and then you've got youth athletes and their families and the broader fan base on the other. And so, what are some of the opportunities and challenges that have come up as a result of needing to build a consumer app that serves so many different user groups? >> Yeah, it's uh it's something we to this day deal with. So the the coach and the person kind of managing the organization, the team, it's a very it's a utility product in the best sense. And there's a need for just as quickly as possible take as much friction away from what I need to do. And that sometimes is in conflict with the reason the parents u or family members will go go into the app because they want to see content.

So, we've had this kind of debate about like do you go in and do you immediately see like a lot of videos or do you like get this flow of setting up your team and the schedule and the logistics and that to this day we're still kind of debating that. And then the other piece is and we've made moves in this direction there. There were a bunch of things that facilitated getting to the moment of content creation without which there's nothing for the families to consume. And so we've done more and more and more to move away backward in time call it from content creation which is at the moment of gameplay >> to um to create more logistical features. So you you know of course you have rosters and schedules and maps of where the game is and uh the ability to kind of message the team. So there's all this set of features that are um that just ensure that the game is played and that the and that you know content has

even a chance to be created. Those features are a little bit kind of a table stakes commodity and not really part of the flow towards content generation which of course is also where we see monetization. And so we've had we've had a lot of push pull of like where to prioritize. Some of it's even just resourcing. And at some point we we dedicated product teams to what we call the coach and the fan. >> And we'd have to make some tradeoffs.

And even now I think a really interesting challenge and we talk more about it later is that the coach persona is changing because there's larger organizations. So the decision-m that might have been at a coach level might happen at a at a league level now. And that's that's adding a whole new complexity to what we do. >> Yeah, I am excited to talk more about that. Um, for now let's talk about how

these different constituencies within your customer ecosystem help to fuel some of the growth loops that have propelled game changers ascension. So, walk me through from the moment a new team is formed, typically it's the coach doing that. And so they're using more utilitarian features like rostering the players on their team, inviting their family members, um sending out schedules of upcoming games and practices. How does that beginning of a new activated team's journey then lead to growth through word of mouth that's driven in large part by the youth athletes and their families?

>> Yeah. So, as you said, coach starts, they um have a roster from whatever organization they're part of. The athlete information is in there, but the user as we look at it is is the adult. So, um a parent or guardian and so their information is inputed by the coach. One of the interesting cool things is that gives us acquisition of the parents, the guardians without any additional work beyond what the coach does. So, we've done a lot of stuff to make that really easy. Like by the way, really hard maybe to type into the the phone all of the email addresses of, you know, 20 guardians. So there's this nice seemingly simple but link to the web so you can go on your computer and type it in and you know that sounds actually still a little bit like you know not like the most modern thing but it makes a huge difference.

>> The parents guardians get an invite once the roster is set up and and they have an in the invite is to download the app. They then claim their athlete which you know allows for really u robust parent athlete uh association >> and then some really cool things happen. So you have all the logistics and you know where the games are and the coach or someone on the team starts capturing stats starts uh recording the game if they're doing video streaming and then there's this whole flow of um prompts and notifications that that inspire interaction by the families. So there'll be reminders and notifications on email and and and and sort of uh you know in app and and on phone around games starting. There'll be notifications around uh an event during the game. Uh and then that'll happen after the game as well and kind of inspire people to come in and and you know if they if they missed a game. And going back many

years, we saw that if a team created content around four or five games or more, and a wreck team might have a 12game season, a a higherend team might have, you know, 20 30 game season, or a high school team might if they got over four or five games and they were going to create content for the whole season. That's like I would hate to watch a show on Netflix and then they stop five episodes in and I'm really into it and they don't have the rest. And then what we also saw on the user parent side is there were certain number of if they took a certain number of actions and interacted a certain amount of time with the um with the experience uh they would uh stay for the whole season and then typically you know the average user stays for six or seven years which is pretty cool.

>> Got it. Okay. Okay. So, as I understand

it, you have the coaches. The coaches by and large are the ones forming the teams. But then they very quickly invite dozens of different youth athletes and their parents are guardians. And then because there are all of these interactive features, you've got the scorekeeping, you have advanced stats, you now have live streaming that creates a strong network effect that makes it very difficult for teams to switch off of Game Changer because you've got coaches, parents, athletes, and fans connected to it. And then there are all sorts of other benefits to the broader fan ecosystem around that team, particularly if it's a high school or a select team, a really competitive team.

You might have even have non-family members who are interested in tuning in or following. But at the center of all of that, you still have scorekeeping. And so why was score be such a powerful wedge for game changer to become the number one player in this space? Well, as you said at the outset, a lot of our origin, a lot of our activities in baseball and softball, and there's it is the deepest stat culture, and that isn't just for saying you captured stats. It's a sport where the stats are critical to player development. And as we know, it went from original stats in baseball, softball for 100 years to what was called sort of more advanced stats and saber metrics and all that. And then to even what I I I would you know around some of like physical movement like you know bat velocity and ball velocity and all these kind of things that are that require additional equipment to track.

This is at the pro level. All of those metrics have shown to correlate well with player development. And so coaches want that and they want to be able to train and and and elevate the kids with that information. And so the scorekeeping of the games gives you that that that data and of course you can calculate all the advanced stats it you know basically instantaneously in the background to this day is critical. By the way there are other sports where less stats are captured or stats are less popular and that's totally fine and there's some different ways to think about it. And then the other thing, you didn't explicitly ask this, but why scorekeeping and stack capture has remained critical in the video streaming era is that for a bunch of years, the way to really align the context of what the video is showing you is the scorekeeping.

>> Y >> So you go to a a random video platform and they're great. You might see a video, that's nice, but if you watch sports on TV or streaming, you expect uh pro sports or collegiate sports, you expect the context. baseball game, you want that little box usually on the bottom right. >> So, it's weird to look at a youth sports baseball or softball game and see nothing. And so, that comes from scorekeeping. It's interesting and no one could have predicted how we went, but it's interesting. I think potentially has been beneficial that the origin of game changer was scorekeeping and then into video versus the other way around because even though it's just manipulating numbers, it's actually a lot of technical work behind the scenes to ensure speed, reliability, quality and the real time element of it that people sometimes don't realize how complex that is. Um, you know, we have just a tremendous engineering team on

that and they've been at it for, you know, 15 years. >> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And what I want to get into now is the co pandemic and how that created this window of opportunity to go all in on live stream video in a way that really met a pain point for coaches, players, families, and fans that they hadn't experienced to the same degree before the pandemic. So the co covid

pandemic hits in 2020. Youth sports changed overnight. Coaches, parents, athletes, fans are looking for more connection. What were you hearing from your users at that time? >> That moment was of course seinal to what game changer is today and also I think seinal to the group of leaders and the team that kind of took the mantle from the founders because it was around that time 19 into 20 and really interesting because of the nature of what was going on in the world uh we actually weren't hearing a lot directly from our users.

one of the so game activity particularly yeah certainly March April of 2020 game activity was minus 99.9% so it was it was zero >> wow >> um interestingly enough and being a subscription business our subscriptions were were flat they didn't grow for sure >> uh and we we think that's a testament to like you know just the love people have for our product we would get some feedback like oh we hope everything's okay you know and all that but there wasn't a lot of okay here's what you should do where We heard feedback. This makes it such a personal and powerful story I think is all of us there was only for 50 people on the team. We were just experiencing this new world in everything we do. And my version of that >> in addition to all of us, you know, being on Zoom or other services, playing board games with friends or school, of course. Uh the one that really stands out for me is my mom uh was very active

in her temple locally in in um she lives near us >> and you know she was in her late '7s time >> used a phone but immediately ramped up the curve of Zoom and video and of course we helped her >> and you had all these people who many whom were not savvy phone users uh or tablet users doing like all their religious services on Zoom I'm like, this is this is just the new normal. And it was less about does this stay normal.

I'm like, if this is how we're always going to be, like we got bigger problems. But this massive adoption of of or of the ease of video and you have grandparents and all this, you know, was a big part of our segment doing this like we have to think about what this means. So, it was more just seeing other examples of massive video adoption, even quirky ones that we wouldn't want to keep going into the future, like >> playing board games with friends on video or whatever. But, and and you know, we we said and and this is also and you know, I have a lot to say on this because it was it was such an important point time.

>> We made a decision almost overnight to make a bet on video streaming. >> We we were it was kind of in everyone's subconscious. We came in not not physically. We're on there was a Friday in late March where we brought our core leaders together and we reached out to our oversight uh folks at Dick Sporting Goods and we said we want to build video streaming and we talked about it and like within a single business day we made that decision. We kind of bet the future of the company on it and uh and we launched the MVP in uh you know Labor Day and and to an extent the rest is history. So, let's zoom in on that

because that's such an exciting and unusual moment you're describing. I feel like you were still a small company at that point. So, it's easier to make a bet the company decision in a business day, but still a big move that it sounds like happened within a 24-hour period. So, take me inside the digital conversations that were happening over Zoom at that time and and what were people excited about and maybe what were some of the risks or concerns that that were raised? The conversations were preceded by some overwhelming gut feeling and instinct. And I don't want this to just be conversation about what I did, but it was was pretty small teams about 50 of us. We had three or four key executives. And I I actually it was it was like the 27th or 28th of March. And I remember like the thinking back then to the first week of March. I'd gone into the office on the the 6th or 5th of March. And I'm I'm going in. I'm like,

"What is going on? Why are we doing this?" cuz people were already a little anxious. I remember we went in that day and I didn't even know if I could do it. Although I I guess I could I talked to the team. I'm like, "We have to shut the office." >> And this was a few days before New York like really shut down. The NBA I remember shut down on the 11th. >> And so we had this like, okay, we see what's going on. We have this kind of like gut instinct. I had another feeling like that around the 26th 27th of March.

So first conversation reached out to his single point of contact on the executive team at Dixs was kind of our our liazison for kind of oversight from our parent company. His name was Lee and I called him up and I said Lee you know we have no idea what's going on. Companies are talking about furlowing people. There's an uncertainty again this was March of when gameplay comes back. this notion of being outdoors is better had really crystallized, right?

>> And and I said, "Look, um, we really don't know what to do. Can we what do you think if we build video streaming?" And, you know, we're going to need some support from from you all and you know, maybe we u who knows what we need in terms of resourcing. And he said he called me back and he talked to a couple other people there and he said, "Well, if you can build this by uh September, we really support you." And I said, you know, that's kind of a crazy um timeline. We don't even exactly know what we want to build. Our team's very good at figuring these things out, but I'll call you back in 2 hours. And I called up our head of product, head of engineering. That was our core executive team, the three of us. And I said, uh, I I think we should do this. I don't have a real detailed plan. We think people are going to want this. And can you build it by Labor Day?

>> And I kind of think there's only one answer to this question, like wink wink, you know, on video. mad and of course they did the right thing which is hold their ground and they're like Samir uh give us 2 hours >> and they came back and we had to then decide to stop something else and then they probably were were thinking Samir like really wants to do this and we don't know what's going to happen do we have to lay people off like everyone was like thinking of all extreme situations so they came back and they said they could do it and I called up the our oversight folks at Dix and I said we would do it and I mean this was literally a this was a Friday and I don't want it to come across as like, you know, we're not thoughtful and all that, but when your back's against the wall that way, I if you if the world is zigging, you have to zag and you have to like sometimes you have to make these

kind of calls like it was that it was that moment. It was not a moment to plan uh a long presentation over 30, 45 days. It was just just go and do it. >> Yeah, I couldn't agree more and good for you guys. I remember being at Quizlet at the time and we had our own version of that where suddenly schools were just shutting down everywhere and teachers were out of the classroom, students were out of the classroom, everybody was trying to figure out how to transition to remote learning, but there was no playbook for this. And one of the things that the Quizlet executive team did and I'll never forget and very very proud of Quizlet for doing this is they decided to give away um free or heavily discounted teacher subscriptions for a year to help teachers through that transition. So, you know, sometimes when the world is upside down, you just have to make decisions quickly and um good for you guys for doing that. So, then

fast forward to >> I think it was

>> right at the beginning of 2021 where the live streaming product went um fully public. >> How did the product come together >> and what trade-offs did you have to make to get the product shipped so quickly? terms of how it came together and the trade-off I think it's kind of all handinand companywide tradeoff we were building at the time given our legacy in diamond sports and baseball softball we were building scorekeeping functionality in basketball and we actually had to stop that and we remain um multiport to this day and we've scaled a lot in basketball but we had to make what felt like a very tough decision >> uh but it just felt like that the right moment to do it so we kind of put that aside And then when you get into the product build, this is where our product organization is, you know, just um really exceptional. And we again small teams. We had a handful of product managers. One of them Aman Lumba today

is our SVP of product management and design. He led the product side of this effort and is among the best people I've ever seen at making really good tough trade-offs and telling me when I have to make a trade-off, you know, I don't want to. And um we didn't initially and we've we've continued to they say to make it better and it's gotten amazing, but we didn't emphasize as the number one thing the quality of the video >> and we went with the belief that seeing video would be magical for these families cuz they saw nothing to before unless maybe they're at the game and they took a video clip. And so what we emphasized was the connection of the stats, the score. It was initially scores and then we added more things cuz we said you just get all of the it was it was like not we didn't want it to feel like okay here's a separate thing that you can have >> but it was one unified thing. So you

know from the moment we launched even the MVP there was a little uh scoreboard thing on the bottom >> and and so it wasn't about optimizing the video optimizing the angle. I'm like, just give them something. And you know, the the the player, your kid on second base looked really small. >> Mhm. >> But it just it just kind of worked. And I guess people were kind of used to weird video moments with, you know, with the pandemic going on.

>> Mhm. >> And you know, one other really cool story, and again, like these things really stick with you. We had a um uh we we had a so our aperture was focused in one direction. were all, let's call it, adults working on the team. And we actually had an intern who was a high school college student. And he wasn't on the tech side or the build side. He was in our marketing org, but he was watching the build and he reached out to a few of us and he said, "You know, you're you're building live streaming.

That's amazing. We want highlight clips." >> That is about the most obvious thing anyone could say today, but maybe it wasn't really obvious to us. We had our heads in the sand, kind of focused on the work. And so an 18-year-old, his name is Sam, who was an intern, inspired us to find this way to build highlight clips. And so that that came out more so, like you said, into 2021. >> Mhm. >> And 150 200 million highlight clips get created a year. The highlights are are robust component of our premium tier >> and people are just absolutely enamored by it. And of course in a in a somewhat short form video culture that we live in, the ability to watch those highlights, consume them, and share them has been a major that's like the main ingredient of the rocket fuel that video has been for us. This episode is brought to you by Paddle. Today's fastest growing apps are multi-channel. They use web monetization to reach new audiences,

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So, there's so many things I love about that story. One is you started with your core which was scorekeeping but then you built around that this live stream video experience that leaned into the multi- constituency nature of your product, right? And it built these stronger network effects between the coaches, the athletes, the parents, and the fans. And then that unlocked all of these additional creative opportunities around highlight clips and other advanced stats that you wouldn't have been able to to have done as effectively without live streaming.

How did all of that innovation that came out of this crisis of the co pandemic lead to stronger network effects? And then how did those stronger network effects continue to accelerate the company's organic user acquisition flywheel? >> Yeah, the ability to share the content. There was some sharing of content with stats and the prior game stream. You know, you could download a PDF of your stats, right? But the sharing of video highlight clips, you know, the clips in particular could be done in the app, but of course outside the app to your phone to anywhere that uh we had a step change in the community size of of um of fans of adults, like not a oh, you know, consistent linear growth like like a big change. And we saw the amount of sharing that was happening we think was was happening within the team community and driving more uh users uh you know because because not you know even if parent was really focused on what the

kids was doing they may not you know have downloaded the app or be focused on it. So we think that that inspired more and more people to kind of come back into the product who weren't using it. And then the other thing because the coach makes the decision to use game changer and create content >> and was motivated to this is motivated to this day by the value of the stats to be a better coach. But now you had parents who weren't coaches >> asking the coach to ensure that they were streaming. You had grandparents saying, you know, reaching out whether it was through the parents or directly to the coach saying, you know, I really hope you're streaming this year. And so that just all perpetuated on itself. And um and we think it also kind of worked, you know, in the in the broader community because now, you know, if you had like one team now had this ability, then the opponents there playing and I mean the sharing is

just it's so exponential where stuff gets shared and um and then that that I mean I think to this day there's we're building on that on that verality. >> Yeah, I love that. And obviously not every consumer product has the benefit of building for a community of people that you know can drive a lot of organic growth if you build the right products and features. But in this particular case, it makes so much sense. And I mentioned that my older daughter Kinley just started playing softball last year.

It just so happens that she joined this team called the Sea Monsters that had actually had an almost undefeated season and ended up going to the playoffs. And so over the course of this, you know, 2 month, >> a lot of the parents became very close and we would show up to the games and watch together and we would build these relationships. And then when the championship weekend happened, everybody was so excited about it. And this was without a platform like Game Changer.

But part of the reason I'm so excited to >> introduce it to the coaches there is because I can only imagine how much more excitement there would have been if you can actually have the video content of what happened in the game. I missed a couple games, so I would have loved to go back and see what happened. And then also be able to see the stats. And these are eight-year-olds, but still like being able to see, okay, you know, what is my daughter's batting average and what are her other stats looking like and how has she improved over the course of a season is so compelling. So let's

use that as a transition into the last topic I wanted to talk about, which is where you see game changer going over the next 5 years. And maybe we start with you've articulated a vision for Game Changer to be the the home of youth sports. What does that mean to you and the executive team at Dixs and at Game Changer? And what steps is the company currently taking to get there? >> The youth sports experience is what we call Monday to Sunday, January to December across what we call pregame to postgame. You get ready for the game and pregame, which is all the logistics and everything. You play the game in game day and capture the content and you get better and advance and learn from the game in postgame through coaching and training. Game changer has focused on the game day component in the middle.

I'm thrilled, you know, that we've been able to find a wonderful product, wonderful market and we've been able to create a really robust business around it and give a lot of value and happiness to people. But it's a component of what they do. You can look at this in how the TAM is described. Uh the digital and content TAM in youth sports is maybe seven or eight billion, but the overall TAM is 40 or 50 billion. >> And so we also hear and my favorite version of this was the one parent who said they have 11 apps on their phone.

We want to create a a world where there's a lot more seamless ability to interact with all everything you need digitally. And that we believe is integrating everything from the moment you think about playing youth sports. So finding opportunities which might be at a school that you know your kids connected to. It might be outside the school to getting involved and registering figuring out what equipment you need. Many sports are unplayable without a form of equipment. some more than others and uh and then getting to the games enjoying the games and the experiences learning from them getting the content so you can share it and celebrate it and getting better. There is a massive amount of technology opportunity in all of those areas unlike certain se I mean youth sports is early in major technology disruption that other sectors have had certainly you know very large things like health tech

or fintech and also we find and I generally believe that technology innovation is deflationary so we think that we can ultimately reduce costs which is going to help the families in America focusing on game day and content and the family as the ultimate user are expanding services and have a plan to expand products and services across this ecosystem. Uh that is what we believe is the home of youth sports. I want you to as a family and and an athlete go and play the games in amazing places and do everything else on game changer. So long way to go. Uh there are others trying to think about this, but it's still early days. But we think our connection to the family and our focus on the what we think is most valuable piece of the most valuable thing in youth sports after the kids themselves, which is the content cuz that's your memories. It's your photo albums.

>> Y >> uh that's kind of the center of how we're going to then expand out from we want everything tied back to the game and the content and the family. >> That makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting that you started with coaches and with a more utilitarian product around scorekeeping, but you now you've evolved into a product that's increasingly geared towards families and their athletes and the content that comes out of these games.

>> And so this relates to another question I was going to ask you about. So it's

been almost a decade since you joined in 2017 and earlier this year you uh did a lot of work to launch what is now the most advanced version of Game Changer to date which also in includes updating your subscription plans. So, what were some of the key changes that were included in that launch? >> Yeah, we're really excited because this new version, this new upgrade is the most comprehensive and best game changer product ever in 15 plus years. We we thought a lot about enhancing first the experience for fans and families and elevated the video experience to a new level of quality to 1080 HD. We added in uh automatic highlight reels the way you would get you might get on your phone, you know, when you look when you get a notification about like photos from a year ago. We have those highlight reels and a suite of really really interesting and exciting new coach tools because a coach again is still the gateway to

where we want to go. Smart coaching tools. So you have automatic lineup recommendations. You have game insight so you can point out leveraging the stat capture ways that um the team or individuals could improve uh in-game spray charts and 15 other features and dozens more actually coming later this year as well >> and uh it's really really exciting because we what we're telling our community is you're going to live the game like never before. The coaches are going to be coached smarter. You're going to be able to replay the action.

uh well, you're gonna be able to enjoy the live experience better than ever and replay the action uh in a way that you can't. And what's so important to us and we because we care so deeply about the community is we like to align value with what we're asking our users to do in terms of uh using our app and frankly, you know, paying for it. And so we took a look at our uh packaging and pricing and have always had a very robust free tier. And um and what we did is we we bolstered the free tier with some new features like game alerts. And then we asked our users that if they want to consume the um much more enhanced live streaming experience um to go into our first paid tier, our plus tier. What has always been in our highest paid tier from 2020 onwards, our premium tier is postgame video like highlights and watching the game afterwards. But with the quality of the video that we now have and the excitement to keep

investing in it, we're asking our users to um to subscribe for the plus tier to get live streaming and and and what we're doing to kind of help them with that transition actually is your first five games uh in in in in a calendar year uh live uh will remain free, but after that we're uh we're asking you to go up to the plus tier. We have a lot of users who uh watch 15, 20, 25 games. Their athletes, their kids sometimes playing on two teams. So maybe first half of the year, second half of the year, they could have 30 games. And so we think, you know, in talking to users, there's a lot of understanding that um there's there's logic to this that, you know, as people get more intensively interacting with video that there's a you know, an ask for them to uh to subscribe. Yeah, well, this is all very exciting and as somebody who, as I said, has has a couple youth athletes in my own family, I'm I'm interested to use

the product features myself. I'll also make one more analogy to Quizlet. When I was at Quizlet, and this is true of a lot of education technology companies, you know, it tends to be a very missiondriven culture. And so, sometimes you have employees who say, well, why do we need to charge anything? Everything should just be free. Mhm. >> The problem with that is you need a business in order to be able to uh sustain the operations of the product.

>> And what what I love about premium business models is it doesn't have to be a zero- sum game, right? The more you innovate and the more you add value to your core product experience, you can monetize that value with the people who are willing and able to pay for it. But that allows the business to continue subsidizing the free usage of the product for those who aren't interested in paying for a subscription. And so I think there's a real win-win there. Uh and it sounds like that that's the direction you're going in with your diamond sports business. Let's talk a

little bit more about what you all call emerging sports. So sports outside of baseball and softball that you are investing in for the future. Um what is your plan for expanding increasingly into other sports since you already do have operations in other sports? And which of those sports are you currently most excited about in the near term? Yeah, we are absolutely committed to our emerging sports in particular basketball and we've had a lot of traction there and we've uh we're probably one of the the leaders there, but we want to get to the level of impact and the community that we have built in diamond sports in basketball. You can use the game changanger product for any sport. You can do basic, you know, without a lot of scorekeeping, you can do live streaming, you can do all the other kind of team management tools, but you really need to invest. What we found is you have to have a product and uh how you talk to

users authenticity in the sport. You'll have families with kids kids playing multiple sports but the culture of each sport even at the youth level is so unique. >> So we've are investing heavily in building a team that really is connected to basketball culture and speaks to that audience. And that's not just for marketing and all that. It's for how the product is built. And to what we said talked about a little while ago, the scorekeeping culture is very different.

The video culture is very different. And as everyone knows, the pace of play is very different. And the courts are different size-wise. So, we're customizing everything we do for the sport of basketball. It's the largest participation sport in the United States, just a shade ahead of Diamond Sports, and we are absolutely committed to it. I mean, the investment is really, really significant. We have dedicated teams on it, and um I've spent a lot of the last several months going to a lot of basketball tournaments and just really absorbing the culture. I'm, you know, I played like anyone might. I wasn't like a deep b, you know, athlete in basketball, but I've fallen for it.

I'm all in on basketball. And I think uh maybe we get a chance to speak later in the year or something. We'll have uh we get to the winter season, the basketball product, the game changer will be transformed. >> Yeah, it's very exciting. I mean, I grew up playing soccer. My dad was a basketball player his whole life. And so, it's great that you are increasingly finding ways to take the revenue that you're earning from your core diamond sports business and invested in innovation across some of these other

sports. Last question before we get to our lightning round. How do you expect AI to change the world of you sports in the coming years or how is it already starting to change the world of youports? >> Well, we try and stay focused on true use cases and avoid some of the kind of like sizzle excitement. We want to take all the friction of capturing content away. And while it is a little bit a ways, we want you to take a device or a camera, you know, mobile device or some camera, point it at a field, court, rink, you know, diamond, some place where you're playing sports, press a button, walk away, and capture all the everything you need to give the coach all the insight they need to be better and smarter coaches and families and fans everything they need to relive the memories and enjoy the game. that is going to require for the most part uh a very sophisticated and successful implementation of computer vision uh the

way obviously cars might drive themselves because we want to see the field of play and arrive at those conclusions. We're making a lot of investment there. Uh it's there's a long way to go. We're actually manifesting a lot of that in production in basketball uh even even quick more quickly than diamond because uh it's a new newer opportunity and it's a very fast uh pace of play. Uh you have a lot of great new companies, startups thinking about this.

So we're we also talk to a lot of folks and we'll partner with people but that's really where we want to manifest it. Of course, there's a lot of other obvious things that you can do. Um, but that's the ultimate thing we can do. The ultimate pain point is taking all the work of capturing all this content away. Given the fragmentation of youth sports versus pro, you're going to need for that to occur on very mobility oriented devices, whether that's a mobile phone or streaming cameras. And then you get into all sorts of interesting questions about what you can do on the edge versus in the cloud and compression of video and all that. So we're actively thinking a lot and of course the mobile ecosystem is driven by some you know companies people have heard of like Apple and all that. So there's a uh you know there's a lot of uh you know we're going to uh leverage platforms like that where we

could build you know these you know a really great experience. >> Yeah. Well it's a very exciting future you paint there and one of the things that I love that you started with is make sure you're not building technology in search of a problem. like start with the real human use case and oftent times it's the unsexy problems, right? It's just the like capturing all the stats and all the manual work that used to go into handwriting stats for a baseball or softball game. You guys solved that a long time ago, but now with some of these more advanced analytics and uh different ways of looking at team or individual player performance, I feel like there's a lot that AI can do there.

>> So, let's get into our lightning round. I'm just going to ask you a few rapid fire questions and we'd love to get quick responses from you. The first one that I always ask is what's the best part about working at Game Changer and what's one thing that you would change or are actively working to change since you're the leader of the company. >> Uh the best part is the people that is the teammates and the families and athletes in the youth sports ecosystem.

Uh we love the people that we work with and are connected to and the one thing that I would change is I would love to see all those people more. We have been benefited by attracting talent in every corner of the country and that is incredible and that's how we're going to keep working. I wish I could snap my fingers and teleport to see all of our teammates all the time. That's just maybe that maybe someone's working on that.

>> That's one of the lasting after effects of the pandemic is we still have a lot of people who are working remotely and there are certainly advantages to that. I mean as as a father of young children during the pandemic I benefited from it but I think there are a lot of us who miss the in office culture and so I as as a as a company leader I can understand why you would feel that way. Um, next question is, besides game changer, what's your favorite consumer subscription app and why?

>> Unexpected answer. I'm not going to talk about some Gen AI app, but we all use all of them. And I'm going to show this clip when it, you know, to my my wife because I I now obsessively because of her and to support family's what we need as a family use to-d doist, which is this like fairly straightforward uh task app for things. And I've uh I was I was I was avoiding it. Uh, and I've learned how to use it. It's really easy to use and all of our family to-dos uh for the kids or myself. So, I know there's others. This is not a new category, but I use that one a lot. And so, u you know, in addition to some of the obvious social media and and Gen AI apps, uh, that's that's kind of so, you know, one that's been around for a while, but one that I'm absolutely committed to using a lot. Now, I'm going to show this part of the clip to my wife so she knows.

>> As you should. that often times when I ask this question, you know, I get the Duolingos and the Calms and the Straw and those are all great companies, but >> we're right at the stage in our own family where we could really benefit from something like that. So, and I'm sure my wife would love it. So, I'm going to have to check that out. >> No, I um I It's a good one. >> Awesome. Uh well, next question. So, you're somebody who, like me, has worn different hats throughout your career.

You've been a founder, you've been an operator, you've been an investor. What's one very specific lesson that you've learned from each of those stops in your career >> as a founder? You want to maximize staying uh staying power like how much time do you have to pursue whatever your idea is? Because the best description of a startup I ever got actually the person who introduced me the game changer who's a VC was a group of people working on a hard problem for a very long period of time.

>> So can you uh stay financially liquid mentally uh engaged? Can you manage the rest of your life? Um, so you you need staying power. You have no idea how long it'll take. You'll read a news article about the one-year startup success. That's like 0.00001% of them. >> Um, as an operator, uh, the only thing you can control, some people say you can control expenses and not revenue. The only thing you control is how hard you work. We will never ever ever ever be outworked. I don't I will never be outworked. uh even if someone has better ideas, we will just keep trying and we'll work harder. And then as an investor, I would say and of course kind of with the entrepreneurial kind of early stage bent that I'm passionate about is uh we bet on people and they don't have to be people who've done something before say okay I'm betting on a repeat person. Uh but it's the conviction in the idea and by the way

that's how we make initiative bets internally. I'll say to people and we're not you I'll be like >> I'm going to tell you if I would give you my money for this project that you want to do a game changer or would you put your own money into this initiative you know and um and that works even if it's not investing in a new business it's investing in your own internal initiatives u but I have to see the conviction I'll read the deck I'll hear the presentation just and then just just look at me in the eyes on video call or in person I need to see that they believe and that's how I operate with the people I'm accountable to at exporting goods is they um I won't ask them to back us on an initiative unless I have absolute conviction and I think they we have a a trust with each other that that's how we're going to approach those things.

>> Yeah, a lot of great lessons in there that resonate with me. I mean, one thing I've always said throughout my career is bet on people because people are a leading indicator of success. >> So, I think that's a big one. I loved your point around staying power, especially as an early stage startup. Like nothing else matters if you run out of cash. So, you got to you got to manage your cash flow and you got to manage your life >> uh to be able to keep yourself in the game >> and then and then your point around just outworking people. I mean, uh and as somebody who's at a sports startup, I feel like that is very authentic, right?

Cuz that's >> the the athletes that we love most, there's talent, but there's also work ethic. And uh and some of the best athletes of all time weren't necessarily the most talented. They they they had a lot of talent, but they they outworked everyone else. And that goes a long way. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> A couple more here. What sports do your kids play and do they use apps or other technology for any of those sports?

>> Both of them, they're teenagers, high school, middle school, they've gravitated to racket sports. And actually, uh, so on a it's a more on a personal level, they play squash, which I introduced them to. And I played, my dad played uh when he was around. And it's sort of a sport that I've stuck with me as I've as I've grown up. And so the best part of that is that we they play, you know, on the team, but then we can also play together, the three of us, which is very very cool for me. Uh, and racket sports are underinvested even relative to team sports on tech.

>> So there's some cool startups I've heard about working on this out in the valley, but uh it's not something Gamecher does. Uh, and then they use like a registration pregame uh website >> that just feels like it should be a lot better. So maybe squash and tennis and all those sports become part of the game changanger or home you sports some point in the future. >> Yeah, I have to say I've never I've always loved raet sports. I've never gotten deeply into them, but I played a bit of tennis and squash over the years and they're a lot of fun. Squash in particular I love because I love strategy and I just feel like there's so much strategy in squash. There's all these different angles and ways to think about how to win. And >> it's a sport where your uh which might be different in certain sports where your age has no relevance to your ability to win a match.

>> And um I regularly would uh lose to players far older than me and to this day. It's just and it's about strategy and the ex and the physical exertion. The better player >> Mhm. >> uh will exert themselves a lot less physically because of strategy. Y >> and and it's almost like you need to be able to see the angles and I mean the joke is if you're really much better than your opponent, you'll just stand in the middle and they'll be running back.

Uh but I I I love it for that and it's been it's been a great especially as a kids gotten busier as they get older. It's a great thing for us to spend time together doing. >> Yeah. I had Albert Chang who's the head of growth at chess.com on the podcast a while back and I've always loved chess and to me if there was a physical sport that came closest to chess it probably would be >> squat. I love that. >> Well, last question. What's one challenge and one opportunity of building products for families and kids?

>> So, one one challenge and I mean this on a holistic level is you make a promise, you call it a brand promise or product promise to the ecosystem which is the whole family. Even if you're, you know, it's an education app and a kid is using it or a teacher is using it and that promise is inherent. Yeah, you might say something to them around the quality, around privacy, around data security, around just interaction, right? Not uh making it a um a good experience. Uh you know, making it a wholesome experience that um that is permanent >> and often, as I said, is unspoken. It isn't about what you say to your users.

you just have to do it without them telling you. >> And so I think that is a deep um element of our culture. Uh even if you know it isn't like written in something we say to them and I I only view it as a challenge because in general anyone like you said anyone building for this space should just embed that up front. If you embed it up front in your thinking then it doesn't become a challenge. It's just something you do. the opportunity that I think is and you know we talked earlier about like the two-sided market or coaches and families and this comes from having worked at game changanger the adult fan family parent was the user with and the coach was on the other side the even in the history of the 10 15 years of game changanger even in the time I've been here the use of mobile devices and smartphones and all that by children has increased and that's a whole separate debate but high school

kids in particular are a user persona for game changer >> when they never used to be. >> So I think that's a really interesting opportunity. What can you build for the um for for the high school athlete, the high school age athlete, not just for their families? You know, kids will use the app because their parents signed up, but can we do something wholesome and productive and beneficial directly for the kids? Maybe it's around more sharing of content. So that's a cool opportunity I think going forward.

>> Well, I think that's a great note to end on. And I'm somebody who, you know, both my parents played sports. I played sports growing up. It had a huge impact on my life. And I feel like now more than ever as a parent, I want my children to play sports. Doesn't matter which sport. But I just feel like there's so much value that comes out of getting outside, exerting yourself, challenging yourself, and being part of a team that that teaches valuable life lessons. So, thank you for all the work you and the team at Game Changer are doing. Any um final notes you want to leave the audience with before we wrap up here? Well, I just want to say how excited we are here in 2026 to deliver an experience like never before for game changer families and coaches. And I hope our user community sees that this we are in this for lifetime. Like we're going to keep innovating. We're going to keep investing whether that's in diamond

sports or basketball or other sports. Every year a cohort of kids graduate to college age and a cohort join elementary school age. So, we're in this for a lifetime and uh I know that culture and mentality is pervasive, not just a game changer, but our parent company, Dick Sporting Goods. So, I want I want our users to know that um that we're there with them. And and the and the other thing I want to say is I one of the highlights of the last 18 months of working at Game Changer has been meeting you, Phil, and and just in awe of um the work that you did previously, the the the work you're doing for your your clients and just the um and then also the business that you're building because the impact is so direct. I think every one of I hope every one of your customers just sees it and we saw it, you know, instantaneously. So, thank you for your contribution to the app and consumer, you know, ecosystem and and uh

it's been really great to get to know you. Um and I love everything that you're doing. >> Well, thank you so much. The feeling is certainly mutual and uh I'm wishing all of you the best of luck on this journey you're on uh revolutionizing the world of youth sports through technology. It's an exciting vision and I'm I'm looking forward to seeing it play out. Thanks, Samir. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Thanks again to Revenue for sponsoring this episode. If you're building a subscription app, you can use RevenueCat to power purchases, optimize pay walls, offer discounts, handle refunds, manage customer data, run AP tests, generate insights, and unlock more revenue. I work with dozens of subscription apps, and most of them are already using RevenueCat to power their businesses.

Learn more at revenuecat.com/subversive.