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Hudl's AI camera eliminates the camera man behind sports filming

Hudl Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer John Wirtz joins Yahoo Finance to discuss Hudl's latest innovative camera that's popping up in high schools around the country.

Video transcript

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ADAM SHAPIRO: How do you describe this? I mean, if you're a parent, and you want to watch your son or daughter's game, and you can't get to it, perhaps if they were videotaping and streaming it you could. Well, guess what, coming down the pike and it's just one of the things we're going to talk about with the co-founder and Chief Product Officer from Hudl.

John Wirtz, it's good to have you here. And what we're talking about here is are camera systems that professional sports teams, college sports teams, maybe even high school sports teams, have used to help capture performance and then improve the athlete's performance but you're taking it to the next level. And I think a lot of union labor tech, you know, TV camera operators should be listening right now because they may be losing jobs if you're successful.

JOHN WIRTZ: Yeah, I don't know if we'll get to that spot. But yeah, absolutely, so our vision is really to take-- we work with elite teams, the best in the world but how do we take what those teams are doing, who have analysts and camera people on staff, and bring that all the way to high school teams, and club teams throughout the world that they have the same needs, they want to capture every game, they want to help athletes make highlights, they need to scout their upcoming opponents but it's a lot harder for them to capture the game and break it down and analyze it. So we're working on automating that and then providing them with this new camera technology that automatically captures the game for them. No camera person required.

SEANA SMITH: John, how exactly does it work? We were talking about it in the meeting earlier today and how does it know how to follow the motion, correctly follow wherever the ball is? It sounds like it's pretty complicated but I guess if something can do it, AI will be the answer to that?

JOHN WIRTZ: Yeah, the beauty is it doesn't feel complicated to the team but yeah, inside the camera there's some really incredible intelligence. So it knows the team schedules, the team just puts their game schedule in, the camera knows when to turn on when the game's about to start. It's actually tracking the players and the ball on the field and aiming the camera essentially automatically in the background and following the action like a camera person would. But there's no distraction. So the student manager who's texting on their phone and forgets to aim the camera at the game-winning shot doesn't happen anymore, the camera follows it all automatically. So AI and machine learning really powering what the camera person would do.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, you know what you've got going here is really amazing. I don't know who's reaching out to you because I got to imagine TV stations, local TV stations, Friday night football is huge. And if the high schools got this, as a TV station I can save a lot of money. I don't have to send crews out to go videotape all this and kind of take in the feed. Are you getting those kinds of discussions?

JOHN WIRTZ: Yeah, you're exactly right. It's not only Friday night football, helping cover all those games that the local TV station would love to cover but they can't get to all of them so they have to pick and choose. And it's unfortunate, you know, these athletes are having great moments that they want to share with their community and only a few games get to be televised, but it's also about the JV games and the freshman and the sophomore games that are not going to be covered by the local TV station but still, those teams want them streamed online, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, they want to be able to watch the game if they can't be there. So for us, the beauty of the camera is not only covering varsity and the first team but all the way down through the high school, all the way down through the club every game.

SEANA SMITH: John, is this for all sports or just certain-- or is it sport-specific?

JOHN WIRTZ: So right now we have about 5,500 of these cameras in gyms in high schools around the country covering basketball, volleyball, wrestling. We're launching our outdoor camera this month. So that'll be on stadiums and it'll cover soccer, football, we'll eventually be adapting it to cover lacrosse and kind of everything played on that field in front of the stadium. And then we're in the process of getting-- launching a portable version of the camera and that's where we'll really open the floodgates up on kind of the sports that will be covered. But right now the focus is really basketball, volleyball, football, and soccer.

ADAM SHAPIRO: How much does one of these units cost and do the school boards pay for them or do you have partners who are looking look, I'm going to stream the show, I'm going to stream the game, and then I'm going to sell advertising in that stream?

JOHN WIRTZ: That's a model we're looking at. Right now, the school it's kind of part of the Hudl package that the school purchases. So we're really integrating the camera into the package. So the school buys our Hudl system, which provides analysis tools, the ability for athletes to make highlights, the team to collaborate and share video. But the camera is included in so that they can unlock all the power of that system and not--

ADAM SHAPIRO: How much?

JOHN WIRTZ: --be stuck not capturing the video.

ADAM SHAPIRO: 10 grand? 15 grand?

JOHN WIRTZ: You know, it depends on what the school wants to go with. So it starts all the way at $800 a year for our starter package of Hudl. If you want to start bringing the camera in, we can equip the entire school, the whole athletic department, every sport, and an indoor camera and an outdoor camera starting at essentially the eight grand a year price point. And we don't want the school to think about buying a camera, it's all an annual service. So we'll make sure the camera's working. If we need to send a new one if it gets hit by a basketball or bumped, we'll make sure they're rocking and rolling. So one annual fee and they're covered.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, John Wirtz is going to be a very wealthy individual. He is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Hudl, and there are a lot of parents who can't get to Friday night football games that are going to be very grateful to you.