Smart game basketball moves out of beta
The company also announced that it has expanded into new business-to-business sales channels to coaches and teams in addition to selling directly to consumers. The company’s smart basketballs track critical shooting data points, including makes, misses, swish percentage, shot distance, shooting percentage, form consistency, shot situation, release time, release angle, and quickness.
The ball’s internal sensors do not affect its weight or flight, giving it the same look and feel as compared to a standard game ball, says the company. Using AI data modeling, millions of shots have been analyzed to inform SIQ’s patented technology to achieve over 99% accuracy when shooting indoors.
“Athletes increasingly desire meaningful, data-driven feedback on their physical performance, and prior to SIQ, basketball has been vastly underserved in that area,” says Erik Anderson, CEO of SIQ Basketball. “Now basketball players of all levels have affordable access to advanced shooting analytics and data.”
The SIQ ball has been approved by the world’s governing body for basketball known as the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) for game play, making real-time, in-ball shooting data available for the first time to coaches and players in live settings. The ball can also segment player data among multiple shooters with unique IDs when playing in team mode, has a leaderboard feature, and a coach’s app that will launch in the coming weeks.
The company says it has continued to streamline operations to meet increased demand after raising a pre-seed financing round of just under $1 million last summer led by Tera Ventures in Tallinn, Estonia. Production has ramped up as product demand surges due to the resumption of organized team basketball. With close to 30 patents and a global market of hundreds of millions of basketball players, the company says it plans to raise additional capital later this year to further scale worldwide operations.
Athletes and coaches can get started by purchasing their basketball, available in a range of men’s, women’s, and youth sizes, before choosing a membership plan on iOS or Android. SIQ basketballs, which are powered to last about 550 hours, retail for $99 while the app subscription ranges from $6.99 to $12.99 per month.
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