SPORTLOGiQ, the future of advanced sports analytics, announced today that they have raised $5 million in Series A funding.

The round was lead by Rho Canada Ventures L.P. and Anges Quebec Capital S.E.C., who joined early investors Mark Cuban, TandemLaunch, and 12 prominent angel investors in the financing round.

Founded in 2015, SPORTLOGiQ’s technology generates advanced hockey analytics using standard, single-camera game footage. The computer vision system uses a combination of player tracking and activity recognition algorithms to flag specific game events such as shots or passes, it timestamps them and records their x-y coordinates on the ice. Once the raw data is collected, machine learning and pattern recognition techniques are utilized to extract meaningful insights, allowing broadcasters, teams, analysts and fans see and understand the game in a way previously not possible.

In other words, the forefront of advanced sports analytics in NHL hockey is (probably) happening right here in the Mile-End.

“SPORTLOGiQ has very quickly developed a leadership position in the fast-growing market for AI-powered sports analytics,” said Sean Brownlee, partner at Rho Canada Ventures. “What Craig, Mehrsan and the team have developed over the last two years is impressive and we’re thrilled to be working together.”

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A prominent investment group from Stockholm, Sweden has also participated in the round and will assist with business development in Europe.

“We are very excited to be part of the SPORTLOGiQ family. In particular, we are looking forward to working with their talented team given their machine learning competencies and cutting-edge digitized sports data collection. SPORTLOGiQ is the disruptive game changer the market has been waiting for,” said Peter Wallén of the investment group. “We hope to contribute with deep knowledge of the European market and support in bringing the product to soccer, the largest sport in the world.”

Rather than attaching chips to players or installing extensive gear, SPORTLOGiQ is the only sports analytics company to do all of its analysis through a single camera.

“It’s an AI powered sports analytics platform,” Cassandra Sera, Marketing Coordinator at SPORTLOGiQ told MTLinTECH. “Which is not necessarily the case for other sports analytics companies. We are also the only company that uses a single camera, which means that other companies are either putting chips on players or installing tons of hardware in arenas.”

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The company is the brainchild of Craig Buntin, an Olympic athlete and Mehrsan Javan, a PhD in computer vision. They are joined by 18 PhDs, software engineers and designers, and backed by Mark Cuban and a number of team owners and media executives. The new funding will allow SPORTLOGiQ to expand its client base to Europe as well as create new jobs here in Montreal.

“We already employ some of the world’s leading AI researchers but we’re continuing to grow as a team and we will be adding more computer vision and machine learning researchers and software engineers to our team,” said Sera.

The company will also be opening an office in Sweden. They are currently working with researchers there as they move into the European market and sports.

“This is a tremendously exciting time for AI, computer vision and machine learning. We are fortunate to be working with some of the top researchers globally, ensuring that our technology remains ahead of the curve in a rapidly developing environment.” said Craig Buntin, former Olympic athlete, co-founder and CEO of SPORTLOGiQ. “The response from our customers over the past two years has been incredible, and seeing that same response from our investors has been truly amazing. We are happy to welcome this new group of investors and look forward to the next phase of our team’s development.”