David Graff, John Wirtz, and Brian Kaiser founded Hudl in 2006 with the goal of capturing and adding value to every moment in athletics. Using their computer science backgrounds, the University of Nebraska sports fanatics built a platform that would enable coaches and players to review, annotate, and share game video across multiple platforms and devices. Their hard work paid off.
With 130,000 sports outfits subscribing to their software worldwide—including NFL, NHL, and NBA teams, and an exponentially growing number of high school teams signing up every season—Hudl recently secured $72.5 million in a single Stage B funding round for a total valuation of $250 million. They expect this fall to be their busiest ever with 30,000 varsity high school football teams subscribing at a minimum of $800 per year for their cheapest package!
Several times a year, Hudl holds a company-wide event called Skunkworks, modeled after the fabled Lockheed Martin creative think-tank that produced some of the company’s most innovative solutions. One of their teams wanted to address the “cookie-cutter” sameness of the popular highlights feature favored by athletes and recruiters. Developers Casey Batemen, Joel Hensley, and Kelly Herrington discovered Templater Bot, and found the best turnkey solution for making their highlight reels standout.
Hudl successfully integrated Templater Bot into its robust video automation platform, and will soon roll out the Video Goodness product feature — enabling every team or athlete to have their own customized ESPN-quality highlight reel created in just a few minutes. The feature is eagerly awaited, and should make a huge splash when it goes live just in time for football season.
Templater Bot’s coding-friendly API and ability to turn huge amounts of data into highly customized and individualized bulk renders allowed Hudl developers to clear some of their most challenging implementation and logistical hurdles.
We are blown away by Hudl’s ingenious use of Templater in their pipeline and wish them continued success! We look forward to partnering on more solutions in the future.
