To date TwinPlay is the first and only Italian startup engaged in this area, operational and present on the market, so much so that it has already supplied the system to dozens of clubs that have tested it in the past months, or are currently adopting it. In the list there are names of the caliber of Pallacanestro Varese, Olimpia Milano, Orange Bassano, Blu Basket Treviglio, and also Virtus Padova, Basket Pomezia, Bottanuco, Sermoneta, Piombino, just to name a few professional and semi-professional clubs. The versatility of the system has allowed it to have been tested, or adopted, also by specific training centers for coaches, the Player Development Coaches, including Sharp Shooter Academy, Extrapass, Clash Of Hoops and Bit-Lab which prepare players of both men’s and women’s A and B series, as well as away student-players competing in the NCAA college championship. The list also includes improvement camps where TwinPlay is used to optimize training sessions: LV Experience coordinated by former national team playmaker Luca Vitali, BSM Camp directed by former national team colleague Matteo Soragna (as well as Sky Sport commentator), Inbound Sport, Game Time Basketball Lab, InBound Sport Camp, up to the Little Nations Camp organized by Matteo Piccoli, Serie A player.
TwinPlay’s choice to focus on the world of basketball is not entirely random, given that it was born from the experience in the field of its founder, Davide Todeschini, an engineer with years of experience in the professional and semi-professional world of Italian basketball, who had highlighted that the collection and analysis of data still traveled through overly traditional systems. Through a team of experts, Todeschini has designed a solution to fill this gap in a very effective, highly innovative and at very accessible cost in a mix of software and hardware, making it today the only one on the Italian market proposed by an Italian company, and a one of the few at an international level specifically dedicated to training sessions where the entire process is automated thanks to artificial intelligence and no human intervention is required, even for simple data entry.
“We managed to create a truly innovative pipeline of the entire process: from data extraction through images taken by the camera aimed at the field up to data analysis with real-time output – explains Davide Todeschini –. The system is able to track the movement of up to 8 players at the same time. The parabolas of the field goal shots appear graphically on the computer monitor with the calculation of the angles, the release time of the ball, up to the three-dimensional reconstruction of the trajectory taken by the ball. Furthermore, you get a whole series of statistics ranging from the percentages of shots taken, to shot maps and the type of shots themselves. Again in an automated manner, the system also provides video highlights, which was previously done by a person who had to see the entire recording, choose the most salient moments and then edit the video by cutting the parts that were not of interest. This task is now performed completely by our AI in a short time and in a totally automated manner”.
TwinPlay was designed for the world of basketball but the system can also be adapted for other sports areas where the contribution of technology is now essential to optimize the performance of individual players or an entire team. Over the last few months, TwinPlay has seen an acceleration in the scale up process thanks to the support obtained from IB – Innovation Booster, a holding owned by Antonio Fabrizio, an entrepreneur in the field of high-tech investments. From a practical point of view it was a new injection of oxygen that arrived thanks to the investors linked to IB, some of them with a basketball background which allowed them to immediately understand the potential of the product. Among them, Francesco Minà, with experience in the pharmaceutical-managerial sector, Bruno Scarrà coming from the insurance investment sector, Massimiliano Colella with experience in the sector of technologies in the field of healthcare and public health, Julio Javier Valseca Moreno coming from the technological solutions sector , and Fabio Todeschini founder of several startups. Everyone, in addition to having participated in the capital increase together with IB itself, brought their knowledge and skills to improve some financial and technological aspects of TwinPlay. The team has also been enriched with new strategic figures: Michele Antelli, business developer, Marco D’Anolfo, innovation and marketing manager, Enrico Pitton project manager and Riccardo Rossi, art director.
TwinPlay has recently developed its own WebApp through which clubs, coaches and players can keep track of their performances by monitoring the improvement achieved thanks to the support of AI. In addition to the Italian market, TwinPlay is already working with its commercial representatives on the Spanish market, the most important in Europe, and in the United Arab Emirates where the basketball culture is growing rapidly but there is a lack of innovative supports to optimize gaming performance.
