COMPANY NAME:
E Ball Games Pty Ltd
www.eballgames.com.au
FOUNDER:
Tony Course
ORIGINS:
Founded in 2004
MARKET:
Large corporate sport sponsors.
CAPITAL:
Invested over $1m to date. Looking at staged investment of $1m+ to fund distribution opportunities into overseas markets.
RecentBuzz:
E Ball has been used by high profile clients including Qantas and Toyota, at venues such as the MCG and Telstra Dome and at major events such as the AFL Grand Final. Publicly-listed media companies incorporate E Ball into their product offering
THE PITCH:
E Ball is an interactive sports simulator that involves a real ball and the true mechanics of the sport. As an illustration it is currently applied to soccer as follows
Players stand in front of a large interactive screen that depicts the goals and massive crowd scene in a penalty shootout to decide the outcome of a game at the World Cup. The player kicks a real ball towards the screen image of the goals. The real ball is stopped by a net while the user watches an image of the virtual ball on the screen. It is as if the player is part of the action at the World Cup
There is a gap in the market. Large corporate sponsors of sports invest millions of dollars to sell their products to sports fans. E Ball offers the tool for those sponsors to sell to the millions of fans who go to sports events each year
The technology is proven and patent protected and an experienced management team and advisory board will assist in rollout. The advantages of the underlying E Ball technology will service a previously untapped market.
Initial focus is on the US market, which is 867 times larger than the Australian market due to the large number of major sports events and high level of sponsor investment in this form of marketing activity.
Peter Christo Christo Partners, & Pitch Club co-founder
“Love this opportunity and I think there is real scope for this as an alternative innovation in the sports marketing industry. Putting my Pitch Club hat on though, the issue is not with the innovation. Like most ‘inventors’, the focus here is on the widget rather than getting out to market and what’s in it for the investor. This business needs a channel a strategy to get out to the US market, which may include partners or resellers/licensees, etc., and ensure that there is still good money in it. That is the ‘nut’ that needs to be cracked for someone to get behind this.”
Jordan Green Deputy Chairman, Australian Association of Angel Investors Limited
“Tony has done a good job turning a high fidelity sports simulation trainer into entertainment, and proven the concept with AFL and soccer. Successful market entry in the USA, the world’s largest and most successful sports merchandising market, is the right move. The next few months and first contracts will be critical.”
Peter Alderson Commercialisation Analyst, Offspring Ventures
“The Nintendo Wii has proven physical interaction with an online environment has significant consumer appeal. Hence, the E-Ball Game is likely to attract a marketable crowd and therefore offer a definitive client value proposition. The product has been favourably received in Australia and appears positively positioned for overseas expansion.”
