June 4, 2025 • 45 mins
In Episode 79 of Scoreboard, Chris Titley chats with Tim MacKinnon—CEO of PlayHQ—about shifting Australia’s grassroots sports systems from spreadsheets to scalable platforms, and why transforming community sport isn’t just a tech challenge—it’s a people one.
Tim shares the behind-the-scenes of building tech for community sport, the juggling act of national and state rollouts, and why it’s the everyday volunteer that guides their product thinking.
From onboarding resistance to weekend feedback loops, he unpacks what it takes to transform the way grassroots sport runs across Australia.
From under-9s cricket to national governing bodies, PlayHQ is redefining how sport is played, tracked, and experienced.
🛠️ Tech, teams, and the unsung effort behind a seamless Sporting fixture.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
From the arena to the front office, this is Scoreboard.
I'm Chris Tipley, and each episode brings you stories from
the game of sport, where mindset, money and meaning shape
what comes next. Athletes, coaches, owners and
business leaders unpack the moments that matter, because the
Scoreboard isn't just about winning.
It's about life beyond the game.Now let's get to this week's
(00:23):
episode. Hi, it's Chris Tipley here.
And on today's episode of Scoreboard, the podcast, I'm
joined by Tim McKinnon, CEO of Play HQ.
Tim, how are you this morning? I'm great, yeah.
It's very cold in Sydney, so it's like a it's a Melbourne
morning here and people want to stay out of shock.
It's. Well, it's beautiful.
(00:43):
It's I've got the jumper on herein Brizzy, but the sun is
shining. We've actually had lots of, lots
of rain and, but hopefully this week there's there's forecast
for sunshine through the weekend, which hopefully doesn't
cancel a kids sport. Now Speaking of kids sport, Tim,
you are the CEO of Play HQ. For listeners out there, I'm
curious to know what Play HQ is.Yeah, well, just as you
(01:04):
mentioned, cancellation of kids sport because of weather, 1 of
the favourite features that we have, we're actually putting
weather into the apps that has the forecast for the game.
But, but we, we, we automate thenotification to all of the
participants when a game gets washed out or cancelled.
So the moment the administrator goes in and cancels it, everyone
(01:26):
gets notified. So there's no, none of that.
WhatsApp is the game on, is the game on.
But I think crickets what we do,Sorry.
Before we go, crickets been the tough one because you have to
someone actually has to go out and and like there's a bit of a
WhatsApp group going around go who's gone out to the pitch to
have a look eyes at wet, is it not?
You have to get the old Tony Greg, get the keys out, put them
in the pitch to see if the yeah disappear or not.
(01:47):
We did more than just the weather report.
We we look at the system that runs all of community sport, so
everything from the registrationto the team allocation to the
fixturing to live scoring, the app so everyone knows where
they've got to go with directions to the game.
We do all the incident management, transfers between
(02:08):
clubs, suspensions, concussion management, all, all the data
and analytics around sports. So we're the platform that
underpins grassroots support in Australia and we've done over 8
million registrations. I think about one in three
people playing organised sport in Australia use one of their
applications, whether it's play AFL, play cricket, my Hoops for
(02:34):
basketball or Netball HQ for netball.
Fantastic, Tim. And, and in terms of the, the
numbers of participants, you getto see this which sports are
sort of going up, down, neutral,etcetera, what's popular, what's
not? Well, all, I mean, all sport is
growing, which is the the good news.
So and the female participation has played a big part in that.
(02:55):
So, so and I think basketball and and football, soccer is
growing the fastest because of the, the female participation
growth in those sports is the strongest.
But, but overall, you know, morepeople are playing sport it, you
know, particularly post COVID, we haven't quite like there was
(03:15):
a deep in COVID and, and we're coming back to the levels it was
pre COVID. We're seeing really healthy
growth. The other big trend you're
seeing is, you know, obviously we do kids, but we do adult
sport and, and adult sport participation is increasing and
particularly like more casual formats, you know, so like adult
basketball. And, and that's the, the AUS
(03:38):
play data came out last week from the Australian Sports
Commission and it's actually picked up that trend really well
that there's this more casual formats like 3 and 3 basketball,
pick up, social basketball, you know, AFL, nines, tape ball, all
of these are really growing in this country.
(03:59):
Team. When I was growing up I played a
bit of casual great cricket and you'd sort of rely on the the
newspaper the next day to to seethe results.
You didn't really have a table. I was telling my son this the
other day. He didn't really know who was,
who was on top of the table or where they were or who you're
playing really. You just kind of rocked up and
played the idea around play HQ and the digital age.
(04:21):
How did that come about, I suppose.
And then when did it come about?Because none of my, you know,
pre 2000s are kind of there, butyou know, how did, how did the
idea come about? And then I suppose getting in
with the associations to kind ofcapture, you know, grassroots
and adult participation and, andscores.
Yes, I joined as the CEO just almost two years ago, but it was
(04:42):
founded by few guys, Sam Walsh, Ben Beeth, Kate Whitnish in in
2019. And what they saw was a problem.
You know, the sports were comingto them.
They, they both worked in kind of consulting and, and sports
and sports were coming to them and say, Hey, we need a better
system. And there were existing systems
(05:04):
in Australia at the time. Like we, you know, technology
goes through waves. So we're probably on there.
There's a first wave of technology that actually
digitised some components. But then in 2019, the digital
expectations had raised and people really wanted a system
that for the governing body. They wanted something where they
had really good data and understand how they're playing,
(05:26):
but also really engaged the end participant.
So Play HQ was born out of a fewpain points.
I mean, one of them was obviously the governing bodies
want a better system for, to understand what's going on.
Data compliance, you know, there's a lot of compliance.
And, but the second part was theexpectations of users around
(05:47):
digital experience. And player HQ was born of like
really focusing on the end user,the player, the coach, the
parent and making it easy for them.
Because the, the trend in, in a lot of software, you know, you
know, often software people build software for the people
who are buying the software, right?
They, and, and that happens in enterprise tech people like
(06:09):
build systems for the CFO and procurement.
They answer RFPs, they tick lotsof boxes on features, but no one
really thinks about the end userexperience and play HQ really
focus on that end user experience and how to make it
simple for parents and participants to play.
That was one of the pain points.The other big pain point is for
(06:30):
volunteers that, you know, the burden of administration is, is
huge. And how can you automate tasks
for them and things like scoring, live scoring, you know,
they're massive things, but they're critical for engaging
people. You know, we get about a billion
(06:50):
impressions a year and mainly from people checking their live
scores. And that has like lots of
practical applications like, youknow, 1, you can see the team
that you're playing and who the best players are and their form
and everything like that, which is, and then kids can see after
the game, they can see themselves actually like, you
(07:11):
know, I don't know about your kids, but mine, like unless
some, if, unless they, unless something's happened digitally,
it doesn't exist in their mind. Like they want to watch a, you
know, watch playback, a video ofeverything.
But also this is really practical for parents.
Like I was chatting to, you know, someone recently was
saying, Oh, I love play HQ because, you know, I love to
(07:32):
watch my son play, but I don't want to sit and watch the whole
game. But I can track around play HQ
and you know, he's batting number 7 and see when he's
coming in and drive down there and watch him bat.
So today it's, you know, it's, it's data, it's scoring, it's
live stats. But tomorrow it'll be about
video. Like, you know, I talked about
(07:53):
my kids, my kids, if I'm really specific, they have to video
something for it to actually exist and watch themselves on
video. And so we say that like we have,
we integrate with video players in cricket and basketball and we
produce because we're live scoring the game.
We can capture the moments in time where a scoring event
(08:13):
happened. In cricket, there's one, there's
something happening every ball, every ball is recorded.
But in basketball, when someone scores, you know, that's time
stamped. And then we can create that, you
know, with a partner, create thehighlights and provide that to
every player so they can see all, all the three pointers they
scored it again. And that that that trend is
(08:35):
going to, you know, in in a decade that that will be a
normal part of your experience is that you know, everything
will be available on video. I'm curious, is that a volunteer
doing that or do you have like protocols and things like that
in? Terms of the scoring.
Literally, yeah. No, the videoing is there's
literally someone holding a phone up or is it?
What? Oh, so, yeah, great question.
(08:57):
So the scoring is volunteers, but you know that and they use
our, our, you know, devices and its system.
The video is there's, there's two kinds of technology here.
Like the, the ones that we partner with is actually like a
fixed camera, right? So at basketball venues, they've
installed a camera and the quality of these cameras is, is,
(09:19):
is improving. And so they track, you know,
some of the emerging ones globally, like track the player
with AI. They track the bull and they're
always following the bull. They, they come in close, they
also then track not just we obviously get scoring, but they
track all the other things like rebounds, assists, because they
(09:42):
see all, all of it and they use AI to analyse that.
They see the player number and associate it with the player.
So they've fixed cameras, but then there's others that people,
there's portable cameras, cameras that they, they
volunteer like a manager will bring up and put on the side.
That's quite common in football,soccer, and then there's also
(10:03):
solutions where people can just use their iPhone and look and
just the whole like and watch the game and then it'll sort of
slice it up afterwards. We've seen a bit of a trend
every year. Everyone gets their Spotify
unwrapped. Do you reckon that's going to
happen? You know, with, with kids
eventually? Like you play a profile?
Unwrapped absolutely like yeah, absolutely like that.
(10:25):
That's they're the kinds of things that you know and.
And for the club, just being able to produce their kind of,
you know, it's been a lot of time in the annual yearbook with
all of the stats, leaderboards, all of that.
You think in the future that'll all be, you know, automated and
created for them? Do you stop and think how much
of A like a chain effect that the software has every now and
(10:49):
then and sort of half pinch yourself?
I'm sure there's yearbooks, I'm sure there's scouts, there's
managers, there's under 15 representative teams that people
look at the data and stats that you guys have provided to them
and that can alter and change the course of a direction of one
person's life pretty easily. Yeah, I mean, it's wild.
(11:11):
You know, every weekend we're atthe moment 35,000 games going on
in the system. Yeah, but I don't really think
about like all those micro moments of oh, like someone's,
you know, scoring because I think that'll watch that.
What what the mission of the business is is to unleash the
life changing impact of community sport, but growing
(11:32):
participation and engagement. And I think I'll pinch myself
when I think, oh, we play a small role in getting more
people to play and more kids to play.
So I just got to give you a really dumb example of that.
Like we just finished our peak AFL, netball, basketball
registration season and the teamworked on making sure that
(11:56):
registration experience is, is really smooth and fast.
Like I worked at eBay and ecommerce and that's basic in
other areas like the faster you get people through to check out,
the, the more product you sell. But in sport, everyone sort of
seems, oh, like anyone who starts a registration is going
to finish your registration. The but it's not actually true.
(12:18):
Like like the drop out rates arereally high because you've got
parents, you know, everyone's got competition on time.
If it's too complex, they just don't finish it.
And then their kids saying, oh, did you register me for this?
You're like, oh, sorry, we missed the colour folder, but
that happens. So we grew that 4 1/2% through
just from our C conversion optimization year on year.
(12:39):
And the year before it was 3%. And that, you know, in two and a
half million registrations, 4 1/2%, you know, do the quick
maths, but I think that's a, youknow, an extra.
What is that? 10,000 No. 100 no 100 and
140,000 yeah yeah 100 and 4000 and 40,000 people, right?
(13:03):
Like who played, who wouldn't have otherwise played.
And then we add things like refer a friend in registration.
So people are are asking like pulling their friends in because
we know, particularly for girls,that having a mate that plays
really matters. So all of these things add up.
And and if year in, year out, we're able to bring in more
(13:24):
people, that's what has meaning.You're not of, you know that.
Yeah. Because community sport is, as
you know, better than anyone. It's not just about the sport,
it's about communities like the,the sporting team is the
lifeblood of a rural town. It's about business.
I think that, you know, EV, you know, I mean, the sporting
(13:46):
analogies are overused in business, but you'd, you'd
appreciate them more than anyone.
But really, you know, everythingyou learn about being in a team,
about critical moments, everything you learn in life
actually comes from playing sport as a kid.
And so, you know, I'm passionateabout growing businesses, I'm
(14:07):
passionate about growing communities.
And, and ultimately you play a small part in, in getting more
people exposed to teams and thengetting them, keeping them
playing. Like we've got, you know, some
amazing data analysts and a team, Ryan and Cooper, and
they've built a chain predictionmodel.
So we take all the data we collect the scoring moments, the
(14:28):
attendance, the training, the, the, the game attendance and
all, every data point. We have demographic data and we
can predict the, you know, the first, the first model with 80%
accuracy, how likelihood is thata kid is going to come back next
year and play. And there's all sorts of things
that we don't collect that impact that.
(14:49):
But we've run the model again. It's really interesting, like
when you run it in different sports, like like we did it in
AFL first, but when we ran the data across netball, basketball,
cricket, we actually improved our accuracy with AFL because,
you know, our database is set upso we can see the relationship
between people in different sports and between data points.
(15:11):
And so we're now able to give tothe club or all of the, all of
the, a list of all the players that we think are going to churn
next year. So they can engage them and, and
check in on them and say, hey, you know, what's going on for
you? Do you want to you're going to
come back, have a conversation, the coach, have a conversation
with them and and hopefully they'll just keep more kids
(15:34):
playing. Team, I'm interested to know and
you don't have to give it away in terms of what inputs are in
that. I mean, is it, is it, would you
tuck in sort of winning, losing?Is that something which you
think that? It's so it's a it's yeah, it's
it's it's we just let it loose on all of our data, right?
It's everything. So, so I can't actually even
(15:54):
tell you. I probably could look it up as
like, hey, what what were the key, you know, ascertain what
were the key causal things? What which which data point
impacted that, the accuracy or the piece or the most, but it's
everything. It's it's and we just need to
collect more data. So like, for example, soon we're
(16:15):
adding like, you know, in scoring, capturing the
interchange moments so we can see game time of kids because
that we know that's a critical driver.
Like if the kids. And I mean, I experienced this
and unfortunately my kids, I'm not great at sport.
Like I've always played in the bottom team and I was constantly
being benched as a kid, like I was, I just spent more time on
the bench and you notice it. I'm not sure if it's started or
(16:38):
we want to give all the parents because they'll be arguing over
seconds and minutes that the kids are getting.
But, but those things really matter.
I mean, you know, you were just talking before we started about
parental behaviour, you know, and the impact that can have.
Well, we'll, we, we record incidents and, you know, we'll
be able to, to record incidents that happen in games.
(17:03):
Plus, when you add in video, like, people's behaviour will
improve because they know they're being taped.
We've heard that from sports. But also you'll be able to
capture all this other data fromvideo and the model will get
better and better and better andbetter and understand the kind
of things that will drive. Yeah, well, having a chat, you
(17:23):
know, loosely about parental behaviour and all the, you know,
the right way to act as a parenton the sidelines, the
encouragement you give to your children and other children and
the language and the behaviour, the body language etcetera,
etcetera. On the volunteer side, which is
the OR the officiating, the refereeing and whatnot.
What are you seeing there? You're seeing a bit of a
shortage or is any anything you can see in terms of like
(17:46):
officiating or the volunteers are dropping off or about the
same every year? Oh, look, we see there's a few
things 1 of this there's, there's sport is growing and
volunteer growth has to keep with it.
Like there's, you know, and, andit's, it's tracking behind,
right? Let's see.
So there's a shortage of volunteer.
Australia has an incredible culture around volunteering for,
(18:09):
for sport, you know, and the whole ecosystem depends on
people volunteering. But is it like it all?
There's a shorter shortage of volunteers, There's a shortage
of referees. So we see that volunteers tune
like 30% of them don't come backnext year.
And a lot of that is circumstantial.
You volunteer while your kids playing and then they and they
(18:33):
move out, they stop playing and you don't volunteer.
But on the referee side, we partner with referee Management
solutions, so ref book and ref assist.
And So what they do is they kindof they, they manage all the
referee side, the payments, the identification of referees.
(18:54):
But yeah, look, overall that that that is a a problem that
that they need help with. And our role is how do we
automate tasks and make it easier for everyone to
participate? Yeah.
In the, in the same way like youthink about the referees, the
Uber made it really easy for people to become a driver.
Like we, you know, referee technology needs to provide make
(19:18):
it so simple that you can, anyone can go and referee game
or, or or do that and get accredited.
And for volunteers, I mean, we, we don't play a role in not
attracting volunteers, but what we can do is help to retain
them, make the experience better.
You know, for the team manager, it's a painful task of chasing
people on various things. If we can automate a lot of that
(19:41):
for them, then people hopefully have more time to manage or be a
coach. I mean, obviously everyone talks
about AI at the moment, you know, and they worry about AI
taking their job. The only people that don't worry
about AI taking their job is a volunteer at a sporting club.
(20:02):
And if you think about how you can have a.
An agent or an assistant for every volunteer that helps them
do their job better. Like we've started some of that.
We have, you know, we're testingsome prototypes, but, but at the
moment we, we use AI for advanced fixturing, you know,
because it's really complex algorithm to figure out how do
(20:23):
you optimise all of these different requests from clubs as
they want to have all their homegames here on this weekend.
They can't play, you know, the, the, the ovals being refurbed or
the clubhouse being referred. They can't play this date.
They want the under nines and under eights to play together
all the time before, like peoplewere getting literally, you
(20:45):
know, administrators were in a white board for three weeks
trying to figure out the fixtures and, and you can use AI
to solve those problems. But, and then we also have AI
for like our analytics. You can ask, Hey, you know, type
into a play HQ. Give me a, you know, show me
female versus male participationby region for the last five
(21:06):
years and it will generate a report or a graph or whatever
showing that. But we're we're really bullish
on how can you automate a lot ofthe tasks so that so that
volunteers have more time to coach, to engage the players to
enjoy the game rather than this job of administration.
(21:28):
Yeah, no, my wife's A-Team manager of, of I think, well,
cricket and footy. And one of the things we said
the other day was the jersey numbers get, you know, switched
around all the time and whatever.
Putting putting it in is a little bit tricky.
And, and just on that, I supposethe feedback you get from users
going actually, can you, can youautomate this or can you do
this? How does that work?
Does it generally go to the clubthat goes to the association
(21:49):
that goes to you or do you get direct feedback saying hang on a
second, we've had 15,000 people request this, What?
What next? Yes, that's a great question,
Chris and and one that like we deal with real time.
So we we do there is stuff that philtres up through the club,
you know, to the governing body and they share, you know, areas
(22:12):
of pain points, but we try to talk to and connect with and get
feedback from the end user. So everybody using players Q as
an administrator, you know, getsa Net Promoter score question on
likelihood to recommend and, and, and what we could do
better. So we collect a lot there and,
(22:33):
and you know, we call back people who are detractors and
ask them what we can do better. So our product team is
constantly doing discovery and 10 talking to end users to
identify things and we we break them into sort of thematics.
So you know, you know, at the moment we are working on like
how do you make the game day management easier for the
(22:57):
manager in the app? Look at the app is more of a
player participant, but what canwe do to help all of those you
know, and things like, you know,line UPS allocations jersey
numbers, all all of that. So we, we're very focused on the
end user of ultimately, if, if, if we're building great products
(23:18):
for people like your wife, then everything works.
And the governing body because their job, their stakeholders
for the community. And yeah, they have their own
needs. But if their community's happy,
if everyone, if they don't hear about the software, you know,
their mind and that, that's really good.
So if you make the people at thebottom who are on the on the
(23:39):
pitch or the ground happy, then everything works.
Yeah. And and from that, I suppose you
get the like, I'd say, quote unquote, disputes of like, oh,
this, you've incorrectly done itand all this sort of stuff.
How do you go with that every weekend with so many data
points? Yeah.
We've, we, we look then we're the system of record.
(24:02):
We, we don't kind of get involved in, but there, there
have been some scenarios can think of 1, you know, in cricket
recently, which, you know, I think we, we did the, the
Duckworth Lewis calculation and it was actually ended up being
disputed and it was in the papers.
I think it was in Wagga in the papers and, and it was a, you
(24:26):
know, a final. And so they actually went to the
tribunal and, and the way that someone had has entered the
scores there was they actually made a mistake and play HQ was
correct. So we we have, but we don't get
involved in those. And obviously, you know, we
enable the the governing bodies and the state governing bodies
(24:47):
and the associations and the leagues and give them the data
they need to be able to make thedecisions they have to make.
When it comes to the data though, there must be some
interesting things. I remember a couple of years ago
there was a fast bowler at the Gold Coast that got 6 wickets
and six balls in the last over of the game.
Every week you might get someonepicking up a triple century or
A5 for one, or a or even in 40 kicking 15 goals.
(25:09):
How do you kind of, you know, from a social point of view, can
you amplify that a little bit and give someone a?
Little bit yeah, we probably we could do we could do more of
that where yeah, we do have we had like the team find them and
they share them. You know, there's like a footy
game where I think one team got like 500 points and the other
team got 10 or something like that.
(25:30):
It was just basically, you know,kicking practise.
But yeah, we we highlight some of the games.
We had a good one recently, likeJosh Giddy played in, in, in,
you know, one of the Melbourne basketball games and, and
highlighted that. But yeah, there's, there's,
there is so many stories behind every step.
(25:53):
Tim, that 500 to 1, the algorithm of drop off rates of
people playing, the participation, that team that
got the one against it, do you reckon there'll be a five chance
of dropping off not wanting to play next year?
They might have been incorrectlyrated, potentially.
Yeah, yeah, well, grading's a big thing, right?
Like it's, it's critical and youknow, some of the associations
(26:14):
are unbelievable at grading. Like you can see each year, like
the differential between first and last and that.
And so, but again, that's a dataproblem.
We, we provide them the grading reports.
Every sport does it differently,but would like to get to a place
where actually that, you know, we use AI and tell them this is,
this is the upgrading. And of course they want to
(26:36):
review it and make sure that, but we can take all the data
points of all the players and tell them this is how we think
this team is going to perform. But as you know, you know
predicting performance is, is ifit was, it was, it was 100%
predictable, then you know therewouldn't be a a betting market
(26:57):
then. That would be a betting market.
Yeah, we'd, that's right. The we're living in, you know,
mid 2025, the election just happened with a big topic around
cost of living. Cost of sport is expensive for
parents when their children playmultiple sports.
I've talked a lot about specialisation with a lot of
athletes and a lot of business leaders around, you know,
(27:18):
special, the pros and cons of specialising early in one sport.
And a lot of advice has come through not to play as many as
possible. But with that comes opening the
wallet, the pair of shoes, the jerseys, etcetera, the growth
rates of the kids that go from here to here over over the
summer. I'm curious around payments for
you and, and money and the the sport, you know, how are you
(27:41):
participating in that? How are you collecting payments?
Some high level numbers of what you do.
And I suppose if you think it's an issue in terms of expensive,
you know, participation in sportand also the peripheral things
like rebel sport might go, hey, let's do a deal with you guys to
make it easier for parents. Yeah.
So I think on on the first point, the cost of sport is
(28:03):
going up. It is going up higher than
inflation. And part of that is because of
the, the, the product is gettingbetter, like people are getting
more professional coaches, you know, more kit, you know, better
clubhouses, better ovals, betterfacilities, so you know, better
training. And, but it, it is, it is an
(28:26):
issue. Some sports, you know, some
sports reinvest a lot into making sure they keep the cost
down and, and, and put, you know, their broadcast dollars
back into grassroots because they realise that getting more
kids playing ultimately is what's going to drive the
performance and fandom of the game.
And, and some and, and it variesby sport, it varies by state,
(28:51):
but I, I think you know, yeah, at the end that, that it's, I, I
think it's still a great, you know, people pay it because it's
worth it, right? Like, and you compare the cost
of got other things that you cando with your kids and the
outcomes they get from that. You know, people do it because
it's a worthwhile investment andit brings their kids joy and,
(29:13):
and it's an investment in them and it, and it brings the
family's joy. So I don't, whilst it is going
up, I, I think it's still an incredible value to, to, you
know, if the life lessons you get out of playing sport and I
agree that playing as much sportas you can and as many, you
know, different teams as you can.
And I know it's hard for parents, but but look, I, I, I'm
(29:36):
grateful that my parents let me play a lot of sport.
I wasn't very good at it and I didn't give them much for return
when they watched. But you know, today I look back
and it was really formative in my life.
On the payments question, we, we, we, one of the pain points
is payments, like payments used to be done manually, whether
it's cash or bank transfer. And, and if you're a club, like
(29:59):
chasing money from players was one of the big pain points,
right? Like, and I remember when I used
to play, you know, the, the clubpresident would come down at
like halfway through the season.OK boys, everyone's got to pay
their Subs, you know, with the club can't exist without that.
And then there's all these different payments, you know,
(30:19):
the, the, the national body might have a fee, state body has
a fee, the association has a feeand the club have their fees.
And so I think one of the problems we solve is we automate
a lot of that and make it easierfor everyone to collect their
payments and they do it upfront.So we, we do 1 registration and
we collect all the different fees.
We split them and pay everyone, everybody up and down the tree
(30:43):
that needs to get paid. We have the merchandise you can
buy there while while you check out.
We actually have a a product where called Easy Merch where a
club doesn't even need to go andbuy its own kit and merchandise
anymore and have it sitting in the storeroom and trying to sell
(31:03):
it. We have a third party that the,
that will manufacture custom kit.
So we, we've got the club logo and we'll put it on the jumper
and soon we'll have the the nameand the number on the water
bottle. And so you can, as you go
through checkout, buy like customised kit for your club.
And that's for, you know, for smaller clubs that makes it much
(31:26):
easier for them. And then yeah, the the
opportunity around all of the payments, like from a, as you
say, like to make it easy for parents, you want to pay
everything and and the clubs want to get everyone paid up
front and know who's playing. But then if you could actually
add in while you're purchasing, you know, the uniform, the
(31:47):
socks, the mouth guard, the the boots and just do it all in one
hit. Because I don't know about you,
but like, otherwise, like the morning of the the first game,
like, oh God, you know, you're growing out of your boots.
Where's your mouth guard? Yeah, we had the problem.
The other day with the old, the,the shin pads, yeah, the soccer,
(32:08):
we're like, Oh yeah, that's right.
Shin pads mandatory. You haven't had them for a while
in our household. Off we go, trot along to Rebel
Sport. If you're listening Rebel Sport,
you can sponsor this podcast, bythe way.
But you know, shin pads and thenthe old footy boots, Hand me
Down from the Brothers is like, oh, it's a bit too tight.
And you're like, oh, you have a feel.
You're like, yes, they're very tight, uncomfortable.
You have grown. Time for a new pair of boots.
(32:31):
Yeah, it's endless, Tim. Now being a sports tragic, I
mean, you're you're not coming from a professional sports
background, but you're running abusiness that's embedded in
sports. Where's your you?
You mentioned your parents have,you know, helped you and paid
for you to to play sport. Has there always been an
interest in sport? Have you always loved sport from
the background, even though you may not have worked in the
(32:52):
sector? Oh yeah, yeah.
I mean I love you know and that was part of the I I grew up
playing sport, you know, at 8 years old I thought I'd play
cricket for Australia like every8 year old.
I think the closest I got I wentto school with Dennis Lilies
son. That was the closest I got to
play cricket for Australia, but.Speaking of sports with the Play
(33:14):
HQ, you can go back now and lookat the players that have made
the the big time, quote unquote and you can go back and look at
the innings and their their games.
I. Think it's that's right.
Actually quite fun recently, thesame constancy going off.
Where did he play? Oh, it was actually NSW 2nd 1112
months before he's playing for Australia in the Boxing Day Test
match. And Josh Brown came on the
podcast and I quizzed him about his high score in fifth grade
(33:39):
for Sandgate and he and he kind of knew it.
So it was quite a kind of fun todo that now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tim.
Sorry, you continue. No, I, I was just saying I grew
up playing sport. I played, I was pretty short and
so I, I played the lowest levels.
(33:59):
You know, I was always in the, the last we picked in the lowest
teams, but played right. I played right up to I played
footy. I played in D grade with this
great team called the Dingoes. It was, it was just such a fun
year. We went through undefeated, got
lost in the grand final, but we had such fun like the DD grader,
(34:21):
the, the, the biggest characters, the best people that
don't take, take, take their sport too seriously.
And, and I know that those people, you know, that I played
with, if I rang any, I haven't seen most of them for years, but
if I rang any of them up and asked for a favour, they'd do it
for me. You know, I think that's like,
that's why community sport really matters.
(34:41):
That it, it, you know, Yeah. And so I worked in, worked in
technology most of my career. And then I, I've got 3 kids and
they're playing. And, and Sam Walsh, one of the
founders, he, you know, I've known him for a long time and
(35:03):
he'd reached out and see whetherI wanted to join.
I did some consulting and part of it was my personal
experience. I, I wanted my kids to play
sport in the same way. I didn't have that connection.
And the one, you know, the biggest barriers for them was
I'd been throughout, you know, all of the different sporting
software and it's pretty bad. Like it feels like you're going
(35:25):
back into the 90s with some of them.
And I also just saw the biggest thing for them, the biggest
competition was, was TikTok and roadblocks.
That's the competition of sport.And you know, I had conversation
with Sam about it and the sort of vision that have is like
what, what if you could make, you know, the technology around
(35:48):
sport as addictive as TikTok? Like what if people connected
with the and and were able to look at and think about the
sport and the players queue experience and not just stats,
but everything be able to watch video.
How many more kids could you keep playing if they had that,
that digital experience that went alongside the, the physical
(36:08):
experience? So that's that's the vision and
about how we can really change the relationship that kids and
adults have to support, make it easier for them, but just more
engaging. Yeah, it's a very interesting
point about the the social mediaand gaming.
I mean this when we were growingup, none of that right.
So your competition was probablyyour parents not being able to
(36:31):
afford it or, you know, accessibility of actual
competitions and leagues. And Ali Briganshaw spoke about
being 12 years old as a girl andnot being able to play rugby
league because there's no competition and, and whatnot
like that. But now you've got, you know,
gaming, you've got this huge market, you've got social media
and all these things. You really think that's the
competition now? Absolutely.
(36:53):
I mean, I think it's competitionfor all of us.
It's like where do we spend our time in a day?
Like getting out, getting out, go for a run.
Like your competition is, you know, scrolling through your
phone, right? Like, and it's real for kids and
and adults and yeah, and adults.It's, it's there for everyone.
So it's, it's, it's and I don't have any issue with all that.
(37:19):
And the social media is part of it, you know, the, the
experience of connecting with people.
But but I just my point is that that sport is actually doesn't
have a living level playing field with all of these.
Like I worked in big consumer tech companies, you know, I
worked at eBay for a decade and I know the tools that they had
(37:40):
to engage people to keep them coming back.
You know, we talked about just basics like registration flows,
but all of the marketing tools, the, the data they had the
ability to, you know, to engage users, keep them engaged.
Sport has none of that. Like they're, so they're
playing, they're competing for people's attention with their
(38:02):
behind, their back, tied behind their back because they don't
have that. And so if you could just level
the playing field and give sportlike the same technology stack,
same data, the same engagement tools, then then then it can
actually compete against those other things in a fairway.
And Tim Play HQ is in, you know,you mentioned it was in netball,
(38:24):
you mentioned it was in cricket and AFL, you know, Australian
sort of centric based business. But I'm curious to know what,
yeah, potentially are you thinking a little bit bigger and
maybe thinking on a global scale?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, we do cricket and
hockey in, in New Zealand as well.
But we've just launched Basketball England and yeah, the
(38:46):
opportunity in, in Europe, in North America is massive.
There's 2 billion people playingcommunity or grassroots sports
in the world, you know, and our mission to unleash their life
changing impact of community sport really can only be
achieved by going global. And it's been really interesting
(39:06):
to see as we're rolling out basketball in England, we, we've
seen a great one of our team members, Danny, who's from
Shepperton, she's living in Manchester and going around and
training all of the basketball associations and the leagues
there. And how like the technology that
we've developed in Australia through the feedback of hundreds
of thousands of volunteers and administrators.
(39:27):
How is this transformative? Like we Australia is way ahead
in sports technology and in the way we run community sports.
You know, I was talking to to someone in France in sports
recently and they were like, they still couldn't believe that
Australia beat France in the in the middle tally in the, you
(39:47):
know, how does a nation so small?
And it's because of our grassroots sport.
And we're lucky enough that we've been built, you know,
based on the demands of very demanding set of community here.
People take this sport seriously.
But the opportunity when you take that to new countries, you
can be completely transformative.
So I think Australia has a competitive advantage in sports
(40:10):
tech. We have great sports tech
companies. And you know, our next phase is
Page Q becoming a global sports company.
That's a really interesting way of looking about it Tim.
A couple of questions I asked myguests. 1 is as a sports tragic.
What's your all time favourite sporting moment?
You would have to like one that really.
I was thinking back when Robert De Castello won 1992 marathon in
(40:36):
Brisbane. I just remember as a kid
watching the Commonwealth Games and yeah, watching him, I was, I
ran one marathon when I was 30 and actually met Dekes and had a
photo with him beforehand. And then I saw him speak last
year and he told a funny story about that.
(40:57):
He actually had diarrhoea duringthe run and he was wiping his
legs the whole time. He got a wet towel and he was
wiping his legs throughout the run for obvious reasons.
And after that people thought that that was actually a
performance hack. And so people used to take a wet
towel and rub rub their legs while they're running.
(41:20):
Right, the the key to success iswhat Deka does.
Get the towel and rub it. Yeah.
I meant like it was a Yeah, ballused to have a little red, red
rag that he put it on his face and people.
Yeah, yeah. If I have a red rag, I'm going
to get 100, right? Yeah, excellent.
The other, the other question I ask is around the scoreboard
moment, which is a moment in your life which is pretty vivid.
It's like a photo and you're like, I remember that moment if
(41:43):
someone recalled it. You like it feels like
yesterday, but also from that moment on something may have
changed in your life. Yeah, I was, I was listening to
Pat Howard on the podcast recently just talking about the,
the particular people that have had an impact on you.
And I guess I can go back to, you know, childhood and teachers
(42:06):
and, you know, conversation withparents.
But actually one in the last 15 years I had, I was working at
eBay and the, and we had a new leader come in to run eBay
Australia. He he had run eBay in Korea for
15 years. He was and Korea's incredibly
(42:27):
competitive ecommerce market andhis name was Jumon Park.
And he came and he was in Australia for about two months
and he met with all the teams and I, I had a couple of
meetings with him and, and I waslike a mid level employee.
I wasn't sitting on the leadership team.
(42:47):
And he put me into his office and he said, Tim, I'm going to
be here for three or four years running Australia and you're
going to be my successor. And I was completely out of the
blue. And he said, I'm going to train
you. I'm going to put you in
different roles in marketing styles.
(43:09):
And you're not going to move up because you're going to be
moving sideways. And you might get a bit
frustrated by that, but trust me.
And he, he threw you his word that I succeeded him a few years
later. And, you know, I was just so
lucky that I had someone who backed me and put me in and
trained me to, you know, in all that facets.
(43:31):
I need to be to run a company and, and identify that.
And, you know, I think sometimesyou need someone from the
outside to, to, to, to just affirm things.
I mean, I grew up, as I said, playing sport because I was not
great at it. I never saw myself as a leader.
(43:52):
You know, my archetype of a leader was the person who led
the sporting team and I was the best player.
And it's only later in life thatyou figure out that's not the
case. But sometimes you still need
someone to say to you, hey, you're, you're a leader and and
you're the right person. So that's.
An excellent, excellent scoreboard moment and someone
that shows confidence in your ability.
(44:12):
And then obviously from that point of view, you're going, oh,
am I, am I that you've morphed into that, that role.
That's a that's a really good moment, Tim.
I've got one final little quiz game that we play is called the
School Board Scramble and it's it's based on our previous guest
and our previous guest was Tom Boyd, the Western Bulldogs AFL
player that won a premiership in2016.
(44:36):
So the the word I'm going to have to get you to spell
backwards and you've got 20 seconds to do it.
It's actually 2 words and the 2 words are Western Bulldogs.
Tim, your time starts now. SGODLLUBNRETSEW.
(44:59):
Nailed it SGODLLUBNRETSEW finishing on a high note.
Tim McKinnon, CEO of Play HQ, Thank you so much for coming on
Scoreboard and sharing the storyof Play HQ and a story about
yourself as well and how you've morphed into the role, the
importance of Play HQ at a grassroots level, the digital
(45:20):
infrastructure you guys have built, built and are building
through the different sports. I wish you well.
I look forward to following the progress of the different
functions and the the videos andall these different features
that you come on from referees etcetera as well and looking
forward to catching up. Thanks, Chris.
From the arena to the front office, this is Scoreboard.
I'm Chris Tipley, and each episode brings you stories from
the game of sport, where mindset, money and meaning shape
what comes next. Athletes, coaches, owners and
business leaders unpack the moments that matter, because the
Scoreboard isn't just about winning.
It's about life beyond the game.Now let's get to this week's
(00:23):
episode. Hi, it's Chris Tipley here.
And on today's episode of Scoreboard, the podcast, I'm
joined by Tim McKinnon, CEO of Play HQ.
Tim, how are you this morning? I'm great, yeah.
It's very cold in Sydney, so it's like a it's a Melbourne
morning here and people want to stay out of shock.
It's. Well, it's beautiful.
(00:43):
It's I've got the jumper on herein Brizzy, but the sun is
shining. We've actually had lots of, lots
of rain and, but hopefully this week there's there's forecast
for sunshine through the weekend, which hopefully doesn't
cancel a kids sport. Now Speaking of kids sport, Tim,
you are the CEO of Play HQ. For listeners out there, I'm
curious to know what Play HQ is.Yeah, well, just as you
(01:04):
mentioned, cancellation of kids sport because of weather, 1 of
the favourite features that we have, we're actually putting
weather into the apps that has the forecast for the game.
But, but we, we, we automate thenotification to all of the
participants when a game gets washed out or cancelled.
So the moment the administrator goes in and cancels it, everyone
(01:26):
gets notified. So there's no, none of that.
WhatsApp is the game on, is the game on.
But I think crickets what we do,Sorry.
Before we go, crickets been the tough one because you have to
someone actually has to go out and and like there's a bit of a
WhatsApp group going around go who's gone out to the pitch to
have a look eyes at wet, is it not?
You have to get the old Tony Greg, get the keys out, put them
in the pitch to see if the yeah disappear or not.
(01:47):
We did more than just the weather report.
We we look at the system that runs all of community sport, so
everything from the registrationto the team allocation to the
fixturing to live scoring, the app so everyone knows where
they've got to go with directions to the game.
We do all the incident management, transfers between
(02:08):
clubs, suspensions, concussion management, all, all the data
and analytics around sports. So we're the platform that
underpins grassroots support in Australia and we've done over 8
million registrations. I think about one in three
people playing organised sport in Australia use one of their
applications, whether it's play AFL, play cricket, my Hoops for
(02:34):
basketball or Netball HQ for netball.
Fantastic, Tim. And, and in terms of the, the
numbers of participants, you getto see this which sports are
sort of going up, down, neutral,etcetera, what's popular, what's
not? Well, all, I mean, all sport is
growing, which is the the good news.
So and the female participation has played a big part in that.
(02:55):
So, so and I think basketball and and football, soccer is
growing the fastest because of the, the female participation
growth in those sports is the strongest.
But, but overall, you know, morepeople are playing sport it, you
know, particularly post COVID, we haven't quite like there was
(03:15):
a deep in COVID and, and we're coming back to the levels it was
pre COVID. We're seeing really healthy
growth. The other big trend you're
seeing is, you know, obviously we do kids, but we do adult
sport and, and adult sport participation is increasing and
particularly like more casual formats, you know, so like adult
basketball. And, and that's the, the AUS
(03:38):
play data came out last week from the Australian Sports
Commission and it's actually picked up that trend really well
that there's this more casual formats like 3 and 3 basketball,
pick up, social basketball, you know, AFL, nines, tape ball, all
of these are really growing in this country.
(03:59):
Team. When I was growing up I played a
bit of casual great cricket and you'd sort of rely on the the
newspaper the next day to to seethe results.
You didn't really have a table. I was telling my son this the
other day. He didn't really know who was,
who was on top of the table or where they were or who you're
playing really. You just kind of rocked up and
played the idea around play HQ and the digital age.
(04:21):
How did that come about, I suppose.
And then when did it come about?Because none of my, you know,
pre 2000s are kind of there, butyou know, how did, how did the
idea come about? And then I suppose getting in
with the associations to kind ofcapture, you know, grassroots
and adult participation and, andscores.
Yes, I joined as the CEO just almost two years ago, but it was
(04:42):
founded by few guys, Sam Walsh, Ben Beeth, Kate Whitnish in in
2019. And what they saw was a problem.
You know, the sports were comingto them.
They, they both worked in kind of consulting and, and sports
and sports were coming to them and say, Hey, we need a better
system. And there were existing systems
(05:04):
in Australia at the time. Like we, you know, technology
goes through waves. So we're probably on there.
There's a first wave of technology that actually
digitised some components. But then in 2019, the digital
expectations had raised and people really wanted a system
that for the governing body. They wanted something where they
had really good data and understand how they're playing,
(05:26):
but also really engaged the end participant.
So Play HQ was born out of a fewpain points.
I mean, one of them was obviously the governing bodies
want a better system for, to understand what's going on.
Data compliance, you know, there's a lot of compliance.
And, but the second part was theexpectations of users around
(05:47):
digital experience. And player HQ was born of like
really focusing on the end user,the player, the coach, the
parent and making it easy for them.
Because the, the trend in, in a lot of software, you know, you
know, often software people build software for the people
who are buying the software, right?
They, and, and that happens in enterprise tech people like
(06:09):
build systems for the CFO and procurement.
They answer RFPs, they tick lotsof boxes on features, but no one
really thinks about the end userexperience and play HQ really
focus on that end user experience and how to make it
simple for parents and participants to play.
That was one of the pain points.The other big pain point is for
(06:30):
volunteers that, you know, the burden of administration is, is
huge. And how can you automate tasks
for them and things like scoring, live scoring, you know,
they're massive things, but they're critical for engaging
people. You know, we get about a billion
(06:50):
impressions a year and mainly from people checking their live
scores. And that has like lots of
practical applications like, youknow, 1, you can see the team
that you're playing and who the best players are and their form
and everything like that, which is, and then kids can see after
the game, they can see themselves actually like, you
(07:11):
know, I don't know about your kids, but mine, like unless
some, if, unless they, unless something's happened digitally,
it doesn't exist in their mind. Like they want to watch a, you
know, watch playback, a video ofeverything.
But also this is really practical for parents.
Like I was chatting to, you know, someone recently was
saying, Oh, I love play HQ because, you know, I love to
(07:32):
watch my son play, but I don't want to sit and watch the whole
game. But I can track around play HQ
and you know, he's batting number 7 and see when he's
coming in and drive down there and watch him bat.
So today it's, you know, it's, it's data, it's scoring, it's
live stats. But tomorrow it'll be about
video. Like, you know, I talked about
(07:53):
my kids, my kids, if I'm really specific, they have to video
something for it to actually exist and watch themselves on
video. And so we say that like we have,
we integrate with video players in cricket and basketball and we
produce because we're live scoring the game.
We can capture the moments in time where a scoring event
(08:13):
happened. In cricket, there's one, there's
something happening every ball, every ball is recorded.
But in basketball, when someone scores, you know, that's time
stamped. And then we can create that, you
know, with a partner, create thehighlights and provide that to
every player so they can see all, all the three pointers they
scored it again. And that that that trend is
(08:35):
going to, you know, in in a decade that that will be a
normal part of your experience is that you know, everything
will be available on video. I'm curious, is that a volunteer
doing that or do you have like protocols and things like that
in? Terms of the scoring.
Literally, yeah. No, the videoing is there's
literally someone holding a phone up or is it?
What? Oh, so, yeah, great question.
(08:57):
So the scoring is volunteers, but you know that and they use
our, our, you know, devices and its system.
The video is there's, there's two kinds of technology here.
Like the, the ones that we partner with is actually like a
fixed camera, right? So at basketball venues, they've
installed a camera and the quality of these cameras is, is,
(09:19):
is improving. And so they track, you know,
some of the emerging ones globally, like track the player
with AI. They track the bull and they're
always following the bull. They, they come in close, they
also then track not just we obviously get scoring, but they
track all the other things like rebounds, assists, because they
(09:42):
see all, all of it and they use AI to analyse that.
They see the player number and associate it with the player.
So they've fixed cameras, but then there's others that people,
there's portable cameras, cameras that they, they
volunteer like a manager will bring up and put on the side.
That's quite common in football,soccer, and then there's also
(10:03):
solutions where people can just use their iPhone and look and
just the whole like and watch the game and then it'll sort of
slice it up afterwards. We've seen a bit of a trend
every year. Everyone gets their Spotify
unwrapped. Do you reckon that's going to
happen? You know, with, with kids
eventually? Like you play a profile?
Unwrapped absolutely like yeah, absolutely like that.
(10:25):
That's they're the kinds of things that you know and.
And for the club, just being able to produce their kind of,
you know, it's been a lot of time in the annual yearbook with
all of the stats, leaderboards, all of that.
You think in the future that'll all be, you know, automated and
created for them? Do you stop and think how much
of A like a chain effect that the software has every now and
(10:49):
then and sort of half pinch yourself?
I'm sure there's yearbooks, I'm sure there's scouts, there's
managers, there's under 15 representative teams that people
look at the data and stats that you guys have provided to them
and that can alter and change the course of a direction of one
person's life pretty easily. Yeah, I mean, it's wild.
(11:11):
You know, every weekend we're atthe moment 35,000 games going on
in the system. Yeah, but I don't really think
about like all those micro moments of oh, like someone's,
you know, scoring because I think that'll watch that.
What what the mission of the business is is to unleash the
life changing impact of community sport, but growing
(11:32):
participation and engagement. And I think I'll pinch myself
when I think, oh, we play a small role in getting more
people to play and more kids to play.
So I just got to give you a really dumb example of that.
Like we just finished our peak AFL, netball, basketball
registration season and the teamworked on making sure that
(11:56):
registration experience is, is really smooth and fast.
Like I worked at eBay and ecommerce and that's basic in
other areas like the faster you get people through to check out,
the, the more product you sell. But in sport, everyone sort of
seems, oh, like anyone who starts a registration is going
to finish your registration. The but it's not actually true.
(12:18):
Like like the drop out rates arereally high because you've got
parents, you know, everyone's got competition on time.
If it's too complex, they just don't finish it.
And then their kids saying, oh, did you register me for this?
You're like, oh, sorry, we missed the colour folder, but
that happens. So we grew that 4 1/2% through
just from our C conversion optimization year on year.
(12:39):
And the year before it was 3%. And that, you know, in two and a
half million registrations, 4 1/2%, you know, do the quick
maths, but I think that's a, youknow, an extra.
What is that? 10,000 No. 100 no 100 and
140,000 yeah yeah 100 and 4000 and 40,000 people, right?
(13:03):
Like who played, who wouldn't have otherwise played.
And then we add things like refer a friend in registration.
So people are are asking like pulling their friends in because
we know, particularly for girls,that having a mate that plays
really matters. So all of these things add up.
And and if year in, year out, we're able to bring in more
(13:24):
people, that's what has meaning.You're not of, you know that.
Yeah. Because community sport is, as
you know, better than anyone. It's not just about the sport,
it's about communities like the,the sporting team is the
lifeblood of a rural town. It's about business.
I think that, you know, EV, you know, I mean, the sporting
(13:46):
analogies are overused in business, but you'd, you'd
appreciate them more than anyone.
But really, you know, everythingyou learn about being in a team,
about critical moments, everything you learn in life
actually comes from playing sport as a kid.
And so, you know, I'm passionateabout growing businesses, I'm
(14:07):
passionate about growing communities.
And, and ultimately you play a small part in, in getting more
people exposed to teams and thengetting them, keeping them
playing. Like we've got, you know, some
amazing data analysts and a team, Ryan and Cooper, and
they've built a chain predictionmodel.
So we take all the data we collect the scoring moments, the
(14:28):
attendance, the training, the, the, the game attendance and
all, every data point. We have demographic data and we
can predict the, you know, the first, the first model with 80%
accuracy, how likelihood is thata kid is going to come back next
year and play. And there's all sorts of things
that we don't collect that impact that.
(14:49):
But we've run the model again. It's really interesting, like
when you run it in different sports, like like we did it in
AFL first, but when we ran the data across netball, basketball,
cricket, we actually improved our accuracy with AFL because,
you know, our database is set upso we can see the relationship
between people in different sports and between data points.
(15:11):
And so we're now able to give tothe club or all of the, all of
the, a list of all the players that we think are going to churn
next year. So they can engage them and, and
check in on them and say, hey, you know, what's going on for
you? Do you want to you're going to
come back, have a conversation, the coach, have a conversation
with them and and hopefully they'll just keep more kids
(15:34):
playing. Team, I'm interested to know and
you don't have to give it away in terms of what inputs are in
that. I mean, is it, is it, would you
tuck in sort of winning, losing?Is that something which you
think that? It's so it's a it's yeah, it's
it's it's we just let it loose on all of our data, right?
It's everything. So, so I can't actually even
(15:54):
tell you. I probably could look it up as
like, hey, what what were the key, you know, ascertain what
were the key causal things? What which which data point
impacted that, the accuracy or the piece or the most, but it's
everything. It's it's and we just need to
collect more data. So like, for example, soon we're
(16:15):
adding like, you know, in scoring, capturing the
interchange moments so we can see game time of kids because
that we know that's a critical driver.
Like if the kids. And I mean, I experienced this
and unfortunately my kids, I'm not great at sport.
Like I've always played in the bottom team and I was constantly
being benched as a kid, like I was, I just spent more time on
the bench and you notice it. I'm not sure if it's started or
(16:38):
we want to give all the parents because they'll be arguing over
seconds and minutes that the kids are getting.
But, but those things really matter.
I mean, you know, you were just talking before we started about
parental behaviour, you know, and the impact that can have.
Well, we'll, we, we record incidents and, you know, we'll
be able to, to record incidents that happen in games.
(17:03):
Plus, when you add in video, like, people's behaviour will
improve because they know they're being taped.
We've heard that from sports. But also you'll be able to
capture all this other data fromvideo and the model will get
better and better and better andbetter and understand the kind
of things that will drive. Yeah, well, having a chat, you
(17:23):
know, loosely about parental behaviour and all the, you know,
the right way to act as a parenton the sidelines, the
encouragement you give to your children and other children and
the language and the behaviour, the body language etcetera,
etcetera. On the volunteer side, which is
the OR the officiating, the refereeing and whatnot.
What are you seeing there? You're seeing a bit of a
shortage or is any anything you can see in terms of like
(17:46):
officiating or the volunteers are dropping off or about the
same every year? Oh, look, we see there's a few
things 1 of this there's, there's sport is growing and
volunteer growth has to keep with it.
Like there's, you know, and, andit's, it's tracking behind,
right? Let's see.
So there's a shortage of volunteer.
Australia has an incredible culture around volunteering for,
(18:09):
for sport, you know, and the whole ecosystem depends on
people volunteering. But is it like it all?
There's a shorter shortage of volunteers, There's a shortage
of referees. So we see that volunteers tune
like 30% of them don't come backnext year.
And a lot of that is circumstantial.
You volunteer while your kids playing and then they and they
(18:33):
move out, they stop playing and you don't volunteer.
But on the referee side, we partner with referee Management
solutions, so ref book and ref assist.
And So what they do is they kindof they, they manage all the
referee side, the payments, the identification of referees.
(18:54):
But yeah, look, overall that that that is a a problem that
that they need help with. And our role is how do we
automate tasks and make it easier for everyone to
participate? Yeah.
In the, in the same way like youthink about the referees, the
Uber made it really easy for people to become a driver.
Like we, you know, referee technology needs to provide make
(19:18):
it so simple that you can, anyone can go and referee game
or, or or do that and get accredited.
And for volunteers, I mean, we, we don't play a role in not
attracting volunteers, but what we can do is help to retain
them, make the experience better.
You know, for the team manager, it's a painful task of chasing
people on various things. If we can automate a lot of that
(19:41):
for them, then people hopefully have more time to manage or be a
coach. I mean, obviously everyone talks
about AI at the moment, you know, and they worry about AI
taking their job. The only people that don't worry
about AI taking their job is a volunteer at a sporting club.
(20:02):
And if you think about how you can have a.
An agent or an assistant for every volunteer that helps them
do their job better. Like we've started some of that.
We have, you know, we're testingsome prototypes, but, but at the
moment we, we use AI for advanced fixturing, you know,
because it's really complex algorithm to figure out how do
(20:23):
you optimise all of these different requests from clubs as
they want to have all their homegames here on this weekend.
They can't play, you know, the, the, the ovals being refurbed or
the clubhouse being referred. They can't play this date.
They want the under nines and under eights to play together
all the time before, like peoplewere getting literally, you
(20:45):
know, administrators were in a white board for three weeks
trying to figure out the fixtures and, and you can use AI
to solve those problems. But, and then we also have AI
for like our analytics. You can ask, Hey, you know, type
into a play HQ. Give me a, you know, show me
female versus male participationby region for the last five
(21:06):
years and it will generate a report or a graph or whatever
showing that. But we're we're really bullish
on how can you automate a lot ofthe tasks so that so that
volunteers have more time to coach, to engage the players to
enjoy the game rather than this job of administration.
(21:28):
Yeah, no, my wife's A-Team manager of, of I think, well,
cricket and footy. And one of the things we said
the other day was the jersey numbers get, you know, switched
around all the time and whatever.
Putting putting it in is a little bit tricky.
And, and just on that, I supposethe feedback you get from users
going actually, can you, can youautomate this or can you do
this? How does that work?
Does it generally go to the clubthat goes to the association
(21:49):
that goes to you or do you get direct feedback saying hang on a
second, we've had 15,000 people request this, What?
What next? Yes, that's a great question,
Chris and and one that like we deal with real time.
So we we do there is stuff that philtres up through the club,
you know, to the governing body and they share, you know, areas
(22:12):
of pain points, but we try to talk to and connect with and get
feedback from the end user. So everybody using players Q as
an administrator, you know, getsa Net Promoter score question on
likelihood to recommend and, and, and what we could do
better. So we collect a lot there and,
(22:33):
and you know, we call back people who are detractors and
ask them what we can do better. So our product team is
constantly doing discovery and 10 talking to end users to
identify things and we we break them into sort of thematics.
So you know, you know, at the moment we are working on like
how do you make the game day management easier for the
(22:57):
manager in the app? Look at the app is more of a
player participant, but what canwe do to help all of those you
know, and things like, you know,line UPS allocations jersey
numbers, all all of that. So we, we're very focused on the
end user of ultimately, if, if, if we're building great products
(23:18):
for people like your wife, then everything works.
And the governing body because their job, their stakeholders
for the community. And yeah, they have their own
needs. But if their community's happy,
if everyone, if they don't hear about the software, you know,
their mind and that, that's really good.
So if you make the people at thebottom who are on the on the
(23:39):
pitch or the ground happy, then everything works.
Yeah. And and from that, I suppose you
get the like, I'd say, quote unquote, disputes of like, oh,
this, you've incorrectly done itand all this sort of stuff.
How do you go with that every weekend with so many data
points? Yeah.
We've, we, we look then we're the system of record.
(24:02):
We, we don't kind of get involved in, but there, there
have been some scenarios can think of 1, you know, in cricket
recently, which, you know, I think we, we did the, the
Duckworth Lewis calculation and it was actually ended up being
disputed and it was in the papers.
I think it was in Wagga in the papers and, and it was a, you
(24:26):
know, a final. And so they actually went to the
tribunal and, and the way that someone had has entered the
scores there was they actually made a mistake and play HQ was
correct. So we we have, but we don't get
involved in those. And obviously, you know, we
enable the the governing bodies and the state governing bodies
(24:47):
and the associations and the leagues and give them the data
they need to be able to make thedecisions they have to make.
When it comes to the data though, there must be some
interesting things. I remember a couple of years ago
there was a fast bowler at the Gold Coast that got 6 wickets
and six balls in the last over of the game.
Every week you might get someonepicking up a triple century or
A5 for one, or a or even in 40 kicking 15 goals.
(25:09):
How do you kind of, you know, from a social point of view, can
you amplify that a little bit and give someone a?
Little bit yeah, we probably we could do we could do more of
that where yeah, we do have we had like the team find them and
they share them. You know, there's like a footy
game where I think one team got like 500 points and the other
team got 10 or something like that.
(25:30):
It was just basically, you know,kicking practise.
But yeah, we we highlight some of the games.
We had a good one recently, likeJosh Giddy played in, in, in,
you know, one of the Melbourne basketball games and, and
highlighted that. But yeah, there's, there's,
there is so many stories behind every step.
(25:53):
Tim, that 500 to 1, the algorithm of drop off rates of
people playing, the participation, that team that
got the one against it, do you reckon there'll be a five chance
of dropping off not wanting to play next year?
They might have been incorrectlyrated, potentially.
Yeah, yeah, well, grading's a big thing, right?
Like it's, it's critical and youknow, some of the associations
(26:14):
are unbelievable at grading. Like you can see each year, like
the differential between first and last and that.
And so, but again, that's a dataproblem.
We, we provide them the grading reports.
Every sport does it differently,but would like to get to a place
where actually that, you know, we use AI and tell them this is,
this is the upgrading. And of course they want to
(26:36):
review it and make sure that, but we can take all the data
points of all the players and tell them this is how we think
this team is going to perform. But as you know, you know
predicting performance is, is ifit was, it was, it was 100%
predictable, then you know therewouldn't be a a betting market
(26:57):
then. That would be a betting market.
Yeah, we'd, that's right. The we're living in, you know,
mid 2025, the election just happened with a big topic around
cost of living. Cost of sport is expensive for
parents when their children playmultiple sports.
I've talked a lot about specialisation with a lot of
athletes and a lot of business leaders around, you know,
(27:18):
special, the pros and cons of specialising early in one sport.
And a lot of advice has come through not to play as many as
possible. But with that comes opening the
wallet, the pair of shoes, the jerseys, etcetera, the growth
rates of the kids that go from here to here over over the
summer. I'm curious around payments for
you and, and money and the the sport, you know, how are you
(27:41):
participating in that? How are you collecting payments?
Some high level numbers of what you do.
And I suppose if you think it's an issue in terms of expensive,
you know, participation in sportand also the peripheral things
like rebel sport might go, hey, let's do a deal with you guys to
make it easier for parents. Yeah.
So I think on on the first point, the cost of sport is
(28:03):
going up. It is going up higher than
inflation. And part of that is because of
the, the, the product is gettingbetter, like people are getting
more professional coaches, you know, more kit, you know, better
clubhouses, better ovals, betterfacilities, so you know, better
training. And, but it, it is, it is an
(28:26):
issue. Some sports, you know, some
sports reinvest a lot into making sure they keep the cost
down and, and, and put, you know, their broadcast dollars
back into grassroots because they realise that getting more
kids playing ultimately is what's going to drive the
performance and fandom of the game.
And, and some and, and it variesby sport, it varies by state,
(28:51):
but I, I think you know, yeah, at the end that, that it's, I, I
think it's still a great, you know, people pay it because it's
worth it, right? Like, and you compare the cost
of got other things that you cando with your kids and the
outcomes they get from that. You know, people do it because
it's a worthwhile investment andit brings their kids joy and,
(29:13):
and it's an investment in them and it, and it brings the
family's joy. So I don't, whilst it is going
up, I, I think it's still an incredible value to, to, you
know, if the life lessons you get out of playing sport and I
agree that playing as much sportas you can and as many, you
know, different teams as you can.
And I know it's hard for parents, but but look, I, I, I'm
(29:36):
grateful that my parents let me play a lot of sport.
I wasn't very good at it and I didn't give them much for return
when they watched. But you know, today I look back
and it was really formative in my life.
On the payments question, we, we, we, one of the pain points
is payments, like payments used to be done manually, whether
it's cash or bank transfer. And, and if you're a club, like
(29:59):
chasing money from players was one of the big pain points,
right? Like, and I remember when I used
to play, you know, the, the clubpresident would come down at
like halfway through the season.OK boys, everyone's got to pay
their Subs, you know, with the club can't exist without that.
And then there's all these different payments, you know,
(30:19):
the, the, the national body might have a fee, state body has
a fee, the association has a feeand the club have their fees.
And so I think one of the problems we solve is we automate
a lot of that and make it easierfor everyone to collect their
payments and they do it upfront.So we, we do 1 registration and
we collect all the different fees.
We split them and pay everyone, everybody up and down the tree
(30:43):
that needs to get paid. We have the merchandise you can
buy there while while you check out.
We actually have a a product where called Easy Merch where a
club doesn't even need to go andbuy its own kit and merchandise
anymore and have it sitting in the storeroom and trying to sell
(31:03):
it. We have a third party that the,
that will manufacture custom kit.
So we, we've got the club logo and we'll put it on the jumper
and soon we'll have the the nameand the number on the water
bottle. And so you can, as you go
through checkout, buy like customised kit for your club.
And that's for, you know, for smaller clubs that makes it much
(31:26):
easier for them. And then yeah, the the
opportunity around all of the payments, like from a, as you
say, like to make it easy for parents, you want to pay
everything and and the clubs want to get everyone paid up
front and know who's playing. But then if you could actually
add in while you're purchasing, you know, the uniform, the
(31:47):
socks, the mouth guard, the the boots and just do it all in one
hit. Because I don't know about you,
but like, otherwise, like the morning of the the first game,
like, oh God, you know, you're growing out of your boots.
Where's your mouth guard? Yeah, we had the problem.
The other day with the old, the,the shin pads, yeah, the soccer,
(32:08):
we're like, Oh yeah, that's right.
Shin pads mandatory. You haven't had them for a while
in our household. Off we go, trot along to Rebel
Sport. If you're listening Rebel Sport,
you can sponsor this podcast, bythe way.
But you know, shin pads and thenthe old footy boots, Hand me
Down from the Brothers is like, oh, it's a bit too tight.
And you're like, oh, you have a feel.
You're like, yes, they're very tight, uncomfortable.
You have grown. Time for a new pair of boots.
(32:31):
Yeah, it's endless, Tim. Now being a sports tragic, I
mean, you're you're not coming from a professional sports
background, but you're running abusiness that's embedded in
sports. Where's your you?
You mentioned your parents have,you know, helped you and paid
for you to to play sport. Has there always been an
interest in sport? Have you always loved sport from
the background, even though you may not have worked in the
(32:52):
sector? Oh yeah, yeah.
I mean I love you know and that was part of the I I grew up
playing sport, you know, at 8 years old I thought I'd play
cricket for Australia like every8 year old.
I think the closest I got I wentto school with Dennis Lilies
son. That was the closest I got to
play cricket for Australia, but.Speaking of sports with the Play
(33:14):
HQ, you can go back now and lookat the players that have made
the the big time, quote unquote and you can go back and look at
the innings and their their games.
I. Think it's that's right.
Actually quite fun recently, thesame constancy going off.
Where did he play? Oh, it was actually NSW 2nd 1112
months before he's playing for Australia in the Boxing Day Test
match. And Josh Brown came on the
podcast and I quizzed him about his high score in fifth grade
(33:39):
for Sandgate and he and he kind of knew it.
So it was quite a kind of fun todo that now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tim.
Sorry, you continue. No, I, I was just saying I grew
up playing sport. I played, I was pretty short and
so I, I played the lowest levels.
(33:59):
You know, I was always in the, the last we picked in the lowest
teams, but played right. I played right up to I played
footy. I played in D grade with this
great team called the Dingoes. It was, it was just such a fun
year. We went through undefeated, got
lost in the grand final, but we had such fun like the DD grader,
(34:21):
the, the, the biggest characters, the best people that
don't take, take, take their sport too seriously.
And, and I know that those people, you know, that I played
with, if I rang any, I haven't seen most of them for years, but
if I rang any of them up and asked for a favour, they'd do it
for me. You know, I think that's like,
that's why community sport really matters.
(34:41):
That it, it, you know, Yeah. And so I worked in, worked in
technology most of my career. And then I, I've got 3 kids and
they're playing. And, and Sam Walsh, one of the
founders, he, you know, I've known him for a long time and
(35:03):
he'd reached out and see whetherI wanted to join.
I did some consulting and part of it was my personal
experience. I, I wanted my kids to play
sport in the same way. I didn't have that connection.
And the one, you know, the biggest barriers for them was
I'd been throughout, you know, all of the different sporting
software and it's pretty bad. Like it feels like you're going
(35:25):
back into the 90s with some of them.
And I also just saw the biggest thing for them, the biggest
competition was, was TikTok and roadblocks.
That's the competition of sport.And you know, I had conversation
with Sam about it and the sort of vision that have is like
what, what if you could make, you know, the technology around
(35:48):
sport as addictive as TikTok? Like what if people connected
with the and and were able to look at and think about the
sport and the players queue experience and not just stats,
but everything be able to watch video.
How many more kids could you keep playing if they had that,
that digital experience that went alongside the, the physical
(36:08):
experience? So that's that's the vision and
about how we can really change the relationship that kids and
adults have to support, make it easier for them, but just more
engaging. Yeah, it's a very interesting
point about the the social mediaand gaming.
I mean this when we were growingup, none of that right.
So your competition was probablyyour parents not being able to
(36:31):
afford it or, you know, accessibility of actual
competitions and leagues. And Ali Briganshaw spoke about
being 12 years old as a girl andnot being able to play rugby
league because there's no competition and, and whatnot
like that. But now you've got, you know,
gaming, you've got this huge market, you've got social media
and all these things. You really think that's the
competition now? Absolutely.
(36:53):
I mean, I think it's competitionfor all of us.
It's like where do we spend our time in a day?
Like getting out, getting out, go for a run.
Like your competition is, you know, scrolling through your
phone, right? Like, and it's real for kids and
and adults and yeah, and adults.It's, it's there for everyone.
So it's, it's, it's and I don't have any issue with all that.
(37:19):
And the social media is part of it, you know, the, the
experience of connecting with people.
But but I just my point is that that sport is actually doesn't
have a living level playing field with all of these.
Like I worked in big consumer tech companies, you know, I
worked at eBay for a decade and I know the tools that they had
(37:40):
to engage people to keep them coming back.
You know, we talked about just basics like registration flows,
but all of the marketing tools, the, the data they had the
ability to, you know, to engage users, keep them engaged.
Sport has none of that. Like they're, so they're
playing, they're competing for people's attention with their
(38:02):
behind, their back, tied behind their back because they don't
have that. And so if you could just level
the playing field and give sportlike the same technology stack,
same data, the same engagement tools, then then then it can
actually compete against those other things in a fairway.
And Tim Play HQ is in, you know,you mentioned it was in netball,
(38:24):
you mentioned it was in cricket and AFL, you know, Australian
sort of centric based business. But I'm curious to know what,
yeah, potentially are you thinking a little bit bigger and
maybe thinking on a global scale?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, we do cricket and
hockey in, in New Zealand as well.
But we've just launched Basketball England and yeah, the
(38:46):
opportunity in, in Europe, in North America is massive.
There's 2 billion people playingcommunity or grassroots sports
in the world, you know, and our mission to unleash their life
changing impact of community sport really can only be
achieved by going global. And it's been really interesting
(39:06):
to see as we're rolling out basketball in England, we, we've
seen a great one of our team members, Danny, who's from
Shepperton, she's living in Manchester and going around and
training all of the basketball associations and the leagues
there. And how like the technology that
we've developed in Australia through the feedback of hundreds
of thousands of volunteers and administrators.
(39:27):
How is this transformative? Like we Australia is way ahead
in sports technology and in the way we run community sports.
You know, I was talking to to someone in France in sports
recently and they were like, they still couldn't believe that
Australia beat France in the in the middle tally in the, you
(39:47):
know, how does a nation so small?
And it's because of our grassroots sport.
And we're lucky enough that we've been built, you know,
based on the demands of very demanding set of community here.
People take this sport seriously.
But the opportunity when you take that to new countries, you
can be completely transformative.
So I think Australia has a competitive advantage in sports
(40:10):
tech. We have great sports tech
companies. And you know, our next phase is
Page Q becoming a global sports company.
That's a really interesting way of looking about it Tim.
A couple of questions I asked myguests. 1 is as a sports tragic.
What's your all time favourite sporting moment?
You would have to like one that really.
I was thinking back when Robert De Castello won 1992 marathon in
(40:36):
Brisbane. I just remember as a kid
watching the Commonwealth Games and yeah, watching him, I was, I
ran one marathon when I was 30 and actually met Dekes and had a
photo with him beforehand. And then I saw him speak last
year and he told a funny story about that.
(40:57):
He actually had diarrhoea duringthe run and he was wiping his
legs the whole time. He got a wet towel and he was
wiping his legs throughout the run for obvious reasons.
And after that people thought that that was actually a
performance hack. And so people used to take a wet
towel and rub rub their legs while they're running.
(41:20):
Right, the the key to success iswhat Deka does.
Get the towel and rub it. Yeah.
I meant like it was a Yeah, ballused to have a little red, red
rag that he put it on his face and people.
Yeah, yeah. If I have a red rag, I'm going
to get 100, right? Yeah, excellent.
The other, the other question I ask is around the scoreboard
moment, which is a moment in your life which is pretty vivid.
It's like a photo and you're like, I remember that moment if
(41:43):
someone recalled it. You like it feels like
yesterday, but also from that moment on something may have
changed in your life. Yeah, I was, I was listening to
Pat Howard on the podcast recently just talking about the,
the particular people that have had an impact on you.
And I guess I can go back to, you know, childhood and teachers
(42:06):
and, you know, conversation withparents.
But actually one in the last 15 years I had, I was working at
eBay and the, and we had a new leader come in to run eBay
Australia. He he had run eBay in Korea for
15 years. He was and Korea's incredibly
(42:27):
competitive ecommerce market andhis name was Jumon Park.
And he came and he was in Australia for about two months
and he met with all the teams and I, I had a couple of
meetings with him and, and I waslike a mid level employee.
I wasn't sitting on the leadership team.
(42:47):
And he put me into his office and he said, Tim, I'm going to
be here for three or four years running Australia and you're
going to be my successor. And I was completely out of the
blue. And he said, I'm going to train
you. I'm going to put you in
different roles in marketing styles.
(43:09):
And you're not going to move up because you're going to be
moving sideways. And you might get a bit
frustrated by that, but trust me.
And he, he threw you his word that I succeeded him a few years
later. And, you know, I was just so
lucky that I had someone who backed me and put me in and
trained me to, you know, in all that facets.
(43:31):
I need to be to run a company and, and identify that.
And, you know, I think sometimesyou need someone from the
outside to, to, to, to just affirm things.
I mean, I grew up, as I said, playing sport because I was not
great at it. I never saw myself as a leader.
(43:52):
You know, my archetype of a leader was the person who led
the sporting team and I was the best player.
And it's only later in life thatyou figure out that's not the
case. But sometimes you still need
someone to say to you, hey, you're, you're a leader and and
you're the right person. So that's.
An excellent, excellent scoreboard moment and someone
that shows confidence in your ability.
(44:12):
And then obviously from that point of view, you're going, oh,
am I, am I that you've morphed into that, that role.
That's a that's a really good moment, Tim.
I've got one final little quiz game that we play is called the
School Board Scramble and it's it's based on our previous guest
and our previous guest was Tom Boyd, the Western Bulldogs AFL
player that won a premiership in2016.
(44:36):
So the the word I'm going to have to get you to spell
backwards and you've got 20 seconds to do it.
It's actually 2 words and the 2 words are Western Bulldogs.
Tim, your time starts now. SGODLLUBNRETSEW.
(44:59):
Nailed it SGODLLUBNRETSEW finishing on a high note.
Tim McKinnon, CEO of Play HQ, Thank you so much for coming on
Scoreboard and sharing the storyof Play HQ and a story about
yourself as well and how you've morphed into the role, the
importance of Play HQ at a grassroots level, the digital
(45:20):
infrastructure you guys have built, built and are building
through the different sports. I wish you well.
I look forward to following the progress of the different
functions and the the videos andall these different features
that you come on from referees etcetera as well and looking
forward to catching up. Thanks, Chris.
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