Flashscore, the flagship live score brand for Prague, Czechia-based Livesport, is one of the most popular apps of its ilk across the globe. With more than 100 million downloads and coverage of 35-plus sports, it is one of the giants of the space.
Livesport proceeded to snap up Spanish football-focused stats and news app BeSoccer last year in a major expansion of its footprint, while AI is being deployed across the board to drive efficiency gains. Speaking to EGR on the sidelines of the SBC Summit, CEO Pavel Krbec delves deeper into the company’s operations.
EGR: What has the past 12 months been like for the business?
Pavel Krbec (PK): It has been good. Obviously, for us, football is the main thing. We were not exactly sure what to expect from the Club World Cup, which was the top event during the summer, and it didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t as strong as a European Championship or World Cup, but it did relatively well. What was good is that it got the attention in Brazil and in South America but also in Europe. So, it was fantastic.
EGR: What are Flashscore’s key markets and KPIs?
PK: It’s Brazil, Italy, the UK, Spain and Portugal. Due to the legislative and regulatory changes, Germany is not as good as it used to be. Coming to the key indicators, obviously it is traffic and the ability of the traffic to attract the advertising clients.
EGR: How is that client pipeline currently looking in terms of more onboarding?
PK: I cannot complain. Obviously, I would love to see even more but I think the product proves itself. Betting partners see the traffic we provide them, and the top level of the funnel we keep feeding is of high quality. Every time a partner wants to negotiate with us and complains, we are happy to let them try their luck elsewhere. And they usually come back.
EGR: In terms of product development, you’ve launched a ‘follow the player’ feature – how significant is this and why is now the time to launch?
PK: We realised, maybe three years ago, that there is a significant amount of sport fans who do not have strong relationships with clubs but instead have strong relationships with particular players. So, say it is Viktor Gyökeres – fans really want to follow him. They do not care who he plays for in Portugal or somewhere else or in the Premier League.
Fans are just going to go with him, and the case is the same with most of the high-profile players. In order to satisfy this need of keeping the track with the player, we have been pushing hard for our development and product team to introduce this. Now, you can decide that you are the fan of Arsenal, and you want to follow Arsenal. But at the same time, you can also decide you want to follow Viktor Gyökeres.
EGR: What other product developments are in the pipeline?
PK: We have those relatively tough C-level meetings where each department is pushing for something. When we prioritise something, we always have to sacrifice something, but the follow player feature was something we knew we had to have. It took us a little bit longer than I wanted. But it is also worth saying that we are both a web- and app-based company. Every time we introduce a big feature, we need to be sure we introduce it on both platforms.
EGR: How are you currently tapping into AI and what could the technology be used for across the business in the future?
PK: I am a big pusher for AI and I have a PhD in language modelling. I would never expect that it would take such a dramatic shift. I’m really pushing it in the company. It totally changed the way we work in the development team. Suddenly, even if you are a solo programmer, it feels like you have 50 junior developers at your disposal who are going to take your orders and execute them. We made AI an integral part of how we work. I expect even more. So, I’m pushing it relatively hard. I’m programming myself during my weekends for fun so [the teams] the boys know I’m following them.
We also introduced AI into the workflow of our journalists. An example is if there is a game being played in Spain, our Spanish team is going to write an article. It’s going to be a high-quality article written by an experienced journalist in Spain. Then this journalist is going to submit the Spanish article into our system, where it will get automatically translated into English. Then, it will be visible immediately to the other content teams across the globe. The Polish journalists can immediately adapt the article to the Polish language. We also use AI in supporting our teams with titles and subtitles.
EGR: Why did you decide to purchase BeSoccer, and how has that deal been since it was complete?
PK: It is a company where the product is pretty much similar to what we do, so we knew what to expect. We weren’t buying some alien product; it was something we understood.
We are a Czech company and we needed to open our thinking. We very often face the stigma of operating from Prague and see things from the Central European perspective. We try to fight it, but very often the team gets obsessed with ice hockey. Having a Spanish company in our portfolio opens up our thinking. We were in Latin America and Spain. Suddenly we have a team that speaks Spanish. They understand the specifics of Spanish-speaking nations. I think it’s a good match. We keep the operation in Malaga, and we have a CEO doing a great job.
EGR: What does the next piece of M&A look like for Flashscore?
PK: We are definitely not going to buy a cricket website. It would be something where we would struggle with understanding how it operates. So [similar products] is where we are looking.
EGR: How does Flashscore stand out and compete in a crowded live scores market?
PK: We introduced our news service, so nowadays we are not just a live scores product. We are a sports information product. Our news is excellent, maybe it’s among the top five football news sites worldwide. We are already the biggest Czech media house because our news is consumed by more than 20 million people every month. I mean, it should be even more. And I think we are going to break the barrier of 30 million news users every month.
I believe our company has to provide more than just scores to the users, and we can see it. Our users have been always consuming the news somewhere else. In the UK, they went to BBC Sports. We know that once we have them in the app, they are eager to consume the news there, and we provide them the specific news they want. We have invested a lot into the news section.
We are going to provide some cool AI features. We are doing video previews of the games, which is really cool, where in three or four minutes, you are going to get all the essential information about the upcoming game. We have built our AI video news centre in our building. This is where we are investing, and how we are trying to position ourselves so that we are different from an ordinary live scores website.
The post Flashscore CEO: “We are different from an ordinary live scores website” first appeared on EGR Intel.
In a Q&A in Lisbon, Pavel Krbec explains how the Czech affiliate is deploying AI and using M&A to expand its content and presence in a hotly contested live scores marketplace
The post Flashscore CEO: “We are different from an ordinary live scores website” first appeared on EGR Intel.