Santa Rosa company moves to capture growth in booming amateur sports market

Pocket Radar Inc., a Santa Rosa company that manufactures radar devices for athletes and coaches to track performances, has taken some recent steps to grow its business as the amateur sports industry continues to emulate professional sports.

The company has signed a letter of intent to buy Scout Hub, a Texas software business that has an app that focuses on coaching programs to develop athletes. The owner, Todd Blyleven, has served as marketing manager for Pocket Radar.

Pocket Radar also has entered into a partnership with AthletesGoLive, a livestreaming service for sports and athletic events at the high school level. The company will provide in-game metrics, such as pitching speed, during AthletesGoLive broadcasts as part of an upgrade package.

The moves were taken to help expand the company’s reach as new technologies that were once only within the scope of major professional and college sports leagues become more affordable for amateur teams at the local level, said Steve Goody, co-founder and CEO of Pocket Radar.

The company’s radar is primarily used for baseball and softball players.

“When you look at the systems they (AthletesGoLive) are building, it doesn’t look much different from a professional baseball game broadcast with numbers and stats. Their whole point is to create a set of solutions so that mom and dad and grandpa can watch the game anywhere in the country,” Goody said.

The privately held Pocket Radar was formed in 2009 by Goody, Chris Stewart and Grant Moulton, who knew each other as young engineers in the Sonoma County technology industry.

The emerging sports technology field has become more competitive in recent years as venture capital firms have entered, Goody added. He declined to provide financial details on Pocket Radar, which, according to its LinkedIn page employs 51 to 200 workers.

“There's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital money and private investment money that is funding these companies. We're sort of in that kind of explosion you see in an industry when finally lots of investment money pours into it,” Goody said.

The company expects to offer more services in the future to grow beyond its current customer base, especially as it didn’t suffer much during the pandemic because coaches were able to use Pocket Radar software to instruct players remotely.

“I can tell you that we’re going through a different chapter of the company now … we're growing. And it's really wonderful,” Goody said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 707-521-5233 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.