Multiple reports suggest that live sports viewing has declined for certain sports, especially among Gen Z. To solve this, leagues and broadcasters are trying to make sports more engaging for fans with different kinds of viewing experiences, stats, and analysis.
One way to do this is using volumetric video generation that lets users view the play from various angles, giving an inside-the-video-game experience. The core technology uses numerous cameras to capture the footage in 3D for everyone to look at it from various viewpoints. Canada-based Peripheral Labs wants to make this technology affordable for leagues and teams to so it can reach more broadcasters and fans.
Peripheral Labs was founded by Kelvin Cui and Mustafa Khan in 2024. Both have worked on driverless cars for the University of Toronto’s team, winning several trophies. Khan has worked as a researcher at Huawei, and Cui has experience working on chassis systems as a software engineer at Tesla.
“Both Mustafa and I are huge sports fans. He has been a massive Arsenal fan, and I grew up watching the Vancouver Canucks since I was seven. When Mustafa showed me his research about 3D reconstruction, my brain said it would be cool to watch hockey like this [in a free-flowing, multi-angle way]. This is how we started on Peripheral Labs,” Cui said in a call with TechCrunch.
The company said the idea of volumetric generation isn’t new. But with the new AI models and advances in computer vision, its founders are confident the technology is ready for the the masses.
The duo is using their experience with self-driving cars to apply concepts of robotics perception and 3D vision for the 3D reconstruction of video in sports. This system can reduce the camera requirement from over 100 to as few as 32, helping decrease cost and operational overhead, according Cui and Khan. The startup aims to keep the hardware cost as minimal as possible for teams and broadcasters and sign multi-year contracts for its platform.
The software platform will bring biomechanical data of players and stats for teams and leagues using its own sensor stack, which is similar to the sensors on self-driving cars that capture the scene with depth. It will enable new ways to control the viewing of the play for broadcasters and fans using photorealistic 3D reconstruction technology. For instance, if fans wanted to track only the player with the ball, they could do that. They can also freeze a moment in-game to see different angles for a foul or a critical moment in play.
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“While we work with off-the-shelf cameras, the way we package it with our experience in robotics and ML is what gives us an edge both in terms of platforms and also scaling from small practice enclosures to big soccer and football stadiums,” Cui said.
On the software side, the platform said it can observe different joints, including finger movements of players, to measure flexion. For instance, in a video above of two people playing football (soccer), the system measures flexion of knees and ankles. This could give coaches more ideas about body positioning and the flexibility of a player, and help them improve.
The startup has raised a $3.6 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Daybreak Capital, Entrepreneurs First, and Transpose Platform.
Joe Ros, a partner at Entrepreneur First, noted the fund was surprised by how big the following founders and their autonomous driving team at University of Toronto were. He noted investors are often hesitant to invest in sports-related startups, but Perpheral Labs is also an entertainment play.
“Their ultimate viewer is the consumer, and their demand for sports content is evergreen, not cyclical. With Peripheral, the new standard for that consumption will be immersive, volumetric video. And the work they’re doing now in sports will give them the data, tech, and deployment moat to be the only person in the market able to enable this,” he told TechCrunch over email.
Peripheral Labs said the startup was selective about the VCs they were bringing in, who could help in different areas like product development and go-to-market advice. The company has 10 engineers on its staff and aims to increase headcount with a focus on platform and hardware development to reduce costs for the company, decrease the latency of the system, and also increase the resolution of 3D reconstruction.
The startup hasn’t made any public announcements about the partners it is working with, but said it is in conversation with several teams and leagues in North America. The company competes with other startups like Arcturus Studios in the volumetric capture for sports.
