Ben Reynolds, CEO of Spalk, is the latest guest on SportsJam with Doug Doyle.
Spalk is the cloud-based commentary platform trusted by the NFL, MLB and other leagues. It gives broadcasters the tools to scale live commentary across any sport, any language and any market - and it gives commentators the platform to build a global career. Spalk actually employs more announcers than any network.
Reynolds, originally from New Zealand, came up with the idea back in 2016.
"Me and some buddies from college, like everybody does, we're home watching sports thinking we could do a better job than the professional commentators on TV. So we started broadcasting alternate audio only commentary on YouTube, Facebook Live and also other sports broadcasting engines. We were getting quite a few people who were messaging us saying 'How do I synchronize this to the TV? How do I get your commentary when I'm watching?'. We all had kind of an engineering background and software development background. We said why don't we try to build something that lets our commentary be synchronized through what ever is coming through the television. That was kind of the first iteration of Spalk."
The corporate offices of Spalk are now in New York City. Reynolds, who will become a U-S citizen soon, stresses that fans love watching sports and hearing commentators who speak their particular language.
Reynolds has opened up many opportunities for sports broadcasters. For example, the entrepreneur says some have gone on to regular gigs in soccer and women's professional basketball. Spalk enables sports leagues and commentators to save lots of money since the cloud-based technology can provide quality commentary without the need for travel and a professional studio to produce the program.
"We're really trying to focus on the value we can bring to commentators. I really see our job is helping sports leagues find the best quality talent that's going to help their league grow.
With the NFL expanding it's schedule to places like Dublin, London, Paris Australia, Mexico and Paris, France, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Mexico City and Melbourne, Reynolds gave his thoughts are what country is likely to get an actual NFL team.
"Germany seems to have really rabid fan base for American football. I know that one of the partners we've had over the summer has been the EFA, the European Football Alliance, that has eight teams across Europe. They've been selling out 20-30 thousand seat what are usually soccer stadiums for American football. I really think that German market is ripe for a launch pad for the NFL in Europe. I do think commercially it's probably going to end up being London. I've heard rumors that the Jacksonville Jaguars owner, who also owns a soccer club in London, so I could see there being some tie-in there. But I think the German fan base would go bananas for an NFL franchise."
You can SEE the entire SportsJam interview with Ben Reynolds below:
