Every business is shooting for the stars in some way, but Walljam is doing it in a more literal manner than most
November 7 2018, 12:01am, The Times
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Many will remember whiling away hours of their childhoods kicking or throwing a ball against a wall. Tim Worboys reckons that the wall-based games he played with friends developed the co-ordination that helped him to play several sports. It also inspired a start-up that counts as arguably the world’s biggest football club among its customers.
Walljam is a target-based game that measures the power, accuracy and speed with which players can hit targets. Impact sensors on its modular, mobile walls can test skills across a range of ball sports, including football, rugby, tennis and basketball. Real Madrid took the game on a tour of 15 cities worldwide so that fans could test their skills against the scores achieved by some famous names. Other clients have included Adidas and the Wimbledon tennis championships.
Mr Worboys, 54, quit his well-paid job as a chartered surveyor to develop the idea. “I could have given up several times. You need the backing of your nearest and dearest, otherwise there are a lot of people saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ My wife said, ‘Do what you want, but don’t bet the house.’ I gave up a big-ticket job and now I’m earning less than I did when I was 28. But you have to stick at it.”
He’s certainly done that. Mr Worboys has been kicking the idea around for more than a decade and has been working on it full-time for four years. Grant funding helped him to build a prototype, which Mr Worboys admits was little more than a portable vertical surface and playing court. “There was no real intelligence in it. But I was using [the running and cycling app] Strava and I thought, ‘How about Strava for the most popular ball sports?’ ” Now the company sells the game largely on the premise that it will allow sports sponsors and rights-holders to have better engagement with fans.
“I had a big decision to make. Is this a training aid? For young kids aged between six and 14, it helps to develop touch, technique and accuracy in a pressurised environment as it’s against the clock. But when players get to an elite level, kids over 14, 15, they are being trained to deliver in the pressure of a real-game environment. That’s people chasing you down while you’ve got the ball. This won’t help coaches with that.”
Instead, Mr Worboys believes that he can attract commercial partners that think the game’s blend of the physical and digital will be attractive to a young audience of sports fans. “As a sponsor, you might get your name on the arm of the kit, maybe some-thing around the pitch, a corporate box. That’s where there can be a disconnect. The sponsors want to get return on investment by speaking to the fans and that means creating content that connects with them.
“If you get Harry Kane [the Tottenham and England striker] using the wall, now for the first time a player can see how he or she compares against some of the greatest in the game. The performance data we collect is of interest to the end user.”
Mr Worboys says that players may wish to boast — or more likely laugh about — how they compare with their heroes by sharing their efforts with friends, giving sponsors the chance to package performance data with “photos and videos of them playing so they can properly connect with the fans. Sport is increasingly about engaging with people online, or it will feel like a 20th-century product.”
Though famous former players such as Michael Owen, David Ginola and John Barnes have tried the game, “women footballers and youngsters often score highly. The kids work out quickly how to get the highest score. Get the ball under control, manage the power of the ball based on your ability [so when it bounces back you’re in position for the next shot]. The best kid hit a target every three seconds and scored 270 points. The best pro scored about 160.”
Customers can hire walls by the day, lease them for three years or buy walls outright. The Stevenage-based Walljam aims to secure franchise partners in Britain and an overseas licensor for its patented technology and is in talks with a broadcast rightsholder about regularly using the game in “fanzones” at big sporting events.
The business has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds from private backers and via crowdfunding and expects annual sales to reach more than £500,000 over the next 12 months.
“We’ve built the software, the hardware and the structure. It’s been bloody difficult. Now we want to expand aggressively. It’s been a long journey, but perseverance is king.”
Industry specialists are on the same side Walljam started life as little more than, well, an analogue wall, but Tim Worboys, the company’s founder, says that it is now a modular manufactured product with integrated sensors and software (James Hurley writes).
Bridging the gap has required significant outside expertise and he credits the Manufacturing Growth Programme with providing help on areas such as selecting the right materials and raising private funding.
The Leicestershire-based scheme, which is funded by the European Regional Development Fund, helps small manufacturers to gain access to guidance from industry specialists.
“They say, ‘You’ve got to find three experts in the field, we’ll fund 50 per cent of the cost up to a certain sum.’ They’ve done that three or four times for us. They’ve opened doors for us and helped us to fix problems along the way.
“When we wanted to develop the way our wall panels come together so that they can be modular and mobile, it would have been so much harder without access to the programme.”
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