Show #159 – Tyler Scaturro of Pocket Radar Joins the Knup Sports Show

Tyler Scaturro of Pocket Radar joins the show to “showcase” their product that helps athletes and sports teams track radar and speed from an app!

Ryan Knuppel

Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Ryan Knuppel here with you. Knup Sports Show, episode 159. Man, we’re closing in on 160. Super excited for that. Hey, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day, paying attention to what we have going on here. We always love to have great guests from the sports business world, iGaming world. Anything in sports, we love to have people on that just literally are making a difference. And today we have none other than Tyler Scaturro coming on from Pocket Radar. Tyler’s with us. He’s going to join us and give us a little bit about what’s going on there with their products. So without further ado, let’s bring Tyler on. Tyler, how are you today, my friend? You doing well?

Tyler Scaturro

I’m doing well, Ryan. Thanks for having me on the show. Happy to be here.

Ryan Knuppel

Really excited to hear what you guys got going on. First of all, how’s how’s life treating you in your neck of the woods? Where are you reside at these days?

Tyler Scaturro

So in Northern California, about an hour north of the city of San Francisco. So it’s going well. As you can see, it’s about 85 degrees. Hopefully it’s good weather out where you’re at right now, but it’s heating up.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah, I can’t complain. I’m in Orlando, Florida. So the opposite end of the spectrum, but hey, I’m getting a little bit of sun as well and hoping to enjoy it this afternoon here a little bit. So that’ll be good.

Tyler Scaturro

That’d be perfect.

Ryan Knuppel

Awesome. Well, Tyler, let’s jump right in here. I’m excited to hear what you guys got going on with Pocket Radar, but first tell me a little bit about yourself personally, maybe your career path and kind of what led you to where you are today.

Tyler Scaturro

Yeah, great question. So this is actually my 10th year with the company. So I joined up right after they had released pretty much their first product back in 2010. So I joined in 2012 right out of college, obviously went to the local university around here, but I played a little baseball growing up all the way through high school and then through junior college, and then I transferred over to the college over here where we went to. And myself, it’s been a long, fun journey being with the company, seeing it grow from really being this real small startup into the company we are now with a lot bigger of a team and a lot brighter of a future too, as well. And really it sort of has coincided with this big technology boom in the sports industry all across there with all of the new additions that have been coming in over the past decade.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s awesome you’ve kind of been with the company for that long. I mean, that’s no small feat to stay with the same company that long, and I’m sure you’ve seen the changes with Pocket Radar from beginning to kind of… Well, we won’t even say end. Beginning until now. And I think you’re right. Big data and all this technology that’s going on really has enhanced a lot of different products. Tell us a little bit about Pocket Radar. Give us an idea of what you guys do.

Tyler Scaturro

Yeah, great question. So I mean, the name itself kind of implies what we’ve always been seen as for the longest time, which… Obviously you look at radar technology itself, you think of an officer sitting out there in his car with one of the big radar guns, or a major league scout out at either a major league game or a division one college game using his big ray gun. And really since our founders came out about obviously back in 2010 with the first product, it was something that was really revolutionary for the time. It was that same accurate technology, but something you put in your pocket. So a lot of the coaches… You can carry it around, and it really sort of opened up a brand new market, and really making something that was not really accessible much more accessible to the masses.

Tyler Scaturro

So really this was kind of coinciding with that technology boom we were talking about where you could… Basically, you could be a coach at a high school level playing any sports, not just baseball anymore. We’re talking about softball, volleyball, tennis, all these other sports that would have to run over to the baseball team to go borrow their radar gun. These people could afford to have their own now, and they could train and get much better athletes and returns, and build obviously the progress with each athlete. And it’s been something really exciting to watch.

Tyler Scaturro

I mean, we first came out with our first model, we didn’t know who was going to be the market in the long run. We created something that measured from seven miles an hour to 375 miles an hour. So we didn’t know if NASCAR was going to be the group or law enforcement or anything else like that. So we quickly came to the conclusion that these places, these markets of these groups that wanted to measure the ball speed were really the ones that were excited to embrace the technology, and really it’s been there ever since. It’s really kind of opened that sports market world, and it is been something that’s been accessible to not just the division one or the major league scouts, but Joey’s mom or dad in the backyard being able to use it while training. And it’s been fun to watch. I mean, you could have a parent using the same product that an NFL or Major League Baseball coach is using across the country with the best athletes in the world.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah, that’s pretty amazing, and I was showing some screenshots as you were talking, but it looks like… I mean, you guys are Apple Watch and app and all of the above that just makes it super easy now for consumers to kind of enjoy this type of technology in the day-to-day, and that was kind of where I was going to lead with the next question. You kind of already touched on it, but how available is this, and how affordable is this for the average consumer? We’re talking the day-to-day guy. If I want to go out and have something like this for my up-and-coming high school pitcher, what’s the likelihood of getting something like this?

Tyler Scaturro

Great question. Yeah, so really when we came out, a lot of that technology was in the thousands of dollars, so it really wasn’t accessible. And we came out with something that, it’s in the low hundreds of dollars now for a while to obtain. I mean, that’s the cost of maybe a couple of lessons, a couple months of the gym membership or anything else like that, to have something that will help you improve in your child or anyone else like that, be noticed, be seen or anything else.

Tyler Scaturro

And the Apple Watch is a great notion as well. So that’s actually our third generation model we just came out with that can be connected via Bluetooth to the free app we have, the companion app. And so that way now you can pair it with your Apple Watch or anything else like that and set up your radar gun and just set it and go. You don’t have to be holding the radar gun or anything else like that like the days of the past. You can just set it up, you can use your cell phone to be kind of the remote trigger or anything else.

Tyler Scaturro

And when you talk about that accessibility, it really helps at the youth levels being able to measure their progress and sort of set a baseline and being able to go off of that. I know when I was growing up I would have loved to have at least known where I was, know where you stack up. I had no idea. I didn’t have access to any of this type of equipment, and so it was kind of that unknown uncertainty that kind of… You have that in the back of your mind. And being able to kind of get that objective measurement now, and having access to that just helps as an athlete improve and grow. So it’s exciting to be able to talk to those parents and those coaches that are working with the young athletes and being like, no, no, here you go. You can utilize this for your athletes to have much less uncertainty.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah. Back in the day, the only time I got to see that was when I’d go to the major league stadium that had the little tent set up and you would throw as hard as you can into it and it would say something completely not even close. You’re like, “Yeah, I can throw 80,” and you’re a 12 year old. And so that was the only time you got to kind of measure your arm speed back in the day.

Tyler Scaturro

Exactly, yeah. The carnival type atmosphere, we’ll say. They still have those set up, but yeah, like you said, who knows if any of those are tuned to be correctly, right velocities.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah. So you guys, I mean, obviously you’re changing as technology changes and you’re always having to enhance with that, but where are you guys headed? What’s next? What’s new? I mean, I’m assuming you’re going to continue to develop products and develop things, but anything you can talk about that’s kind of on the horizon or where you guys are headed, into what spaces and things like that?

Tyler Scaturro

That’s a great question. So right now we’re really excited with sort of this app functionality we have, where players can create an account and they can keep track of their progress over time. And obviously it’s one-to-one with the current radar device. For futureness, I mean, if… you’d have to look around the game or slash games, really. I mean, this is all different sports, and a lot of it is really moving towards obviously the measurement capabilities with radar-based technologies like we provide, like Trackman, like those type of ones. But this addition of optical technology, I think, is really what’s going to be helping take over the game, because that provides much more insights into athlete performance and analysis and everything else like that. So really, I mean, that’s something we’re obviously looking into. Computer vision, those type of pieces. Things we can add on to the current existing technology.

Tyler Scaturro

There’s some technologies out there that are utilizing a lot of optics-based technology to provide measurements, but without sort of that accurate radar module attached to it, you’re getting good numbers but not 100% accurate numbers, and so that’s something we’re really focused on is providing that accuracy that people come to expect. And it really hinges upon… At the upper level jobs. Jobs can be dependent upon it as well as players at the lower levels being seen. If you’re training using something that’s not accurate and then you go to the… And then the scout or the coach shows up, or you go to that school and you show much under what they were accepting, or what they were projecting, that can be a little tough. So really that’s what we’re heavily focused on. If we’re going to come out with new technology, it saves time and you want to perfect it, so that’s what we’re looking for the most is obviously spending that time testing and making sure something’s ready before sharing it with the public.

Ryan Knuppel

Sure. Sure. That’s true. And you mentioned… I’m glad you brought it up because I was going to ask this question as well, but in the beginning we kind of alluded to this being a baseball product, right? I mean, this being a pitching-only product. But tell us a little bit more about either the sports that are using this or could be using this. I mean, just maybe list off some sports that maybe we wouldn’t think of that could use something like this in their day-to-day.

Tyler Scaturro

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So baseball and softball to an extent are very similar. I mean, you’ve got that pitching, hitting. Everything’s kind of very much in line with one another, and that’s our two key markets that we work with right now, but there are a lot of different groups that have been using it over the past decade that we didn’t even realize would be using it. A huge group that turned out that we did a lot of work with was volleyball. Serve speed is something that’s an essential practice within the game as well as… And it’s very similar to how it lines up with tennis. I mean, obviously they’re both doing serve speeds. You want to make sure you’re accurate as well with your velocities, because if you’re over, you’re just over-hitting the ball. I mean, it’s nice to show the high velocity, but you got to make sure you’re accurate as well.

Tyler Scaturro

So tennis and volleyball have been two key ones. Obviously ice hockey, field hockey. One that we’ve been really excited about that’s a huge market is cricket. So we’ve been doing a lot of stuff with the cricket bowlers, and that’s a very excited market too, because they haven’t had a lot of access to this type of technology available to see cricket bowler speed, and the amount of people using it for that purpose. And then probably just the one last one is football. I’ve gone to a couple of the AFC football shows and they talked to a few coaches, but really where it’s been exciting is seeing it kind of in a lot of these off-season aspects. A few years ago someone like Tom Brady actually posted on social media using the product to measure his off-season velocity exercises, and so that was just very exciting to see on ESPN or anything else like that. So not seeing a whole lot of traction outside of those markets, but those are kind of the exciting sports markets we’ve been picking up over the years.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah. I mean that’s a lot of sports, and those are actually the ones I was thinking of and thinking through that could be some utility in, so that’s really cool you’re seeing some traction in all of those as well. That’s awesome, so. Well, cool man. I mean, this is a really neat product. I always like to ask this question, because you never know who’s watching, who’s listening, who’s paying attention. In full transparency. We do a lot of gaming, a lot of iGaming interviews, and so there could be a lot of people into the sports betting space that are watching this. I’m not sure how this applies to that industry, but that’s okay. There could be sports business professionals watching this. There could be other types of people watching this. I always ask this question, what do you need? What are you guys looking to do? What do you need help with that maybe others in the industry get help with? What do you guys need to get your company and what you’re doing to the next level?

Tyler Scaturro

That’s a great question. It’s something that I know we have a pretty good developed business team or business development team that kind of is working on a lot of these potential relationships with companies. Right now with our technology, there’s not a whole lot of other groups in the space that are really providing accessible, reliable, accurate technology in measure velocity. A lot of them are much more expensive, or a lot of them are the cheap kind of chunky [inaudible 001404], and a lot of these downloadable apps that are just basically a stopwatch.

Tyler Scaturro

So something we’re obviously working on heavily is really the data play, the long-term data play, having access, being able to provide technology that can be used on fields across the country as opposed to just the major league fields and the division one college fields, which have access to the track bands of the world and all those different technologies. I mean, we want to create a technology where you can utilize it down at the high school level, at the JUCO level, all those type of levels where they don’t typically have access to creating all of this data.

Tyler Scaturro

And so that’s something where we’re excited and we’re working with individuals right now to see if we can start to get more of that available to the mass. Because that was pretty much why we were founded. Our founders, they looked at technology across the space. They had a lot of experience in the industry, but they realized this was something that was just not accessible, and to be able to come in and create something that really kind of shook up that technology space was something that was really exciting to see. So hopefully that was a helpful answer.

Ryan Knuppel

No, it was. It was perfect. So where do you grab this? Where do you buy this at? Is it just at pocketradar.com at the website, or are you guys out other places? Tell us a little bit about where maybe listeners that are interested in this… I know I’m certain interested. I got youth kids that are all into coaching and all the above, and I think having something like this would be just a neat addition as well. So where would I buy something like this?

Tyler Scaturro

Great question. Yeah, yeah. Obviously pocketradar.com. We are available on Amazon too, as well as through Dick’s Sporting Goods online.

Ryan Knuppel

Oh, nice.

Tyler Scaturro

So you can purchase it online on Dick’s Sporting Goods. A lot of them have it in place and you can actually go pick it up at the store, but we do have a lot of other distributors across the country, local facilities, other groups, so if you go to our website, we built a store locator that you can type into, and you type in your local zip code and see if there’s any groups nearby that have it available so you can actually pick it up in person, so that’s really helpful as well. But yeah, those are, those are all kind of the key places to get access.

Ryan Knuppel

We’ll put all those links out there in the show notes and make sure people can get access to all that. But man, these days it’s so easy to just go to Amazon, click it, and like three minutes later it shows up on my doorstep. I’m like, “Whoa, how did that happen?” So it’s nuts.

Tyler Scaturro

It’s incredibly fast.

Ryan Knuppel

It is. It is. Well, Tyler, I really appreciate your time here. Any last words for people listening? Anything we might have missed touching on before I let you go?

Tyler Scaturro

No, yeah, I mean, I think you nailed everything, Ryan. I mean, personally, I’m excited to see baseball season starting up, major league season. It’s finally happening. I’m not sure. Do you have a favorite team that you root for?

Ryan Knuppel

I do. I’m a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan. How about yourself?

Tyler Scaturro

Cardinals fan. Awesome. So I did speak with a few reporters back during the lockout period. Or not the lockout period. During the COVID season.

Ryan Knuppel

Yeah, sure.

Tyler Scaturro

With the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so I do know that we have a lot of guys within the Cardinals, the organization, utilizing it.

Ryan Knuppel

Oh, cool.

Tyler Scaturro

And a lot of things too that you don’t really think for radar, but are mostly utilized at the major league level is sort of this medical rehab conditioning piece.

Ryan Knuppel

Oh, yeah. [inaudible 001723] that.

Tyler Scaturro

A lot of guys coming back from injury or surgery are utilizing the radar gun as sort of the baseline piece to measure at about 70% or 80% of their maximum so they’re not overthrowing.

Ryan Knuppel

Don’t overdo it, [inaudible 001737]. Yeah.

Tyler Scaturro

Exactly.

Ryan Knuppel

Exactly.

Tyler Scaturro

Yeah, and so that’s kind of a fun aspect that… Having that number is very helpful.

Ryan Knuppel

It is. Who’s your team?

Tyler Scaturro

Well, I’m actually right up in the Bay Area. I’ve always been more heavily towards the Giants, I’d say.

Ryan Knuppel

There you go. There you go. Awesome. Well, cool, Tyler. I really appreciate your time. I wish you the best of luck with Pocket Radar. It looks like you guys are just off and running, a well-established product, heavily into the industry already, but I’m excited to share it with our audience and share it with anybody that might want to go out and grab one, and I’ll [inaudible 001808] looking at it myself as well. So thank you for your time, and really appreciate you being here.

Tyler Scaturro

No, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on, Ryan. I really appreciate your time as well. And yeah, I hope you guys have a great afternoon.

Ryan Knuppel

All right. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon, Tyler. Thank you.

Tyler Scaturro

Thanks a lot, Ryan. Bye-bye.

Ryan Knuppel

All right. That was Tyler Scaturro of Pocket Radar. We really appreciate Tyler coming on. Like I said a little bit ago, a little different of a guest, but guess what? We’re Knup Sports. We like to cover anything sports-related. Doesn’t have to be betting or gaming. So if you guys know of any other guests that want to come on and join us, we love to feature products and people and just things that are doing great in the sports world. So Tyler and Pocket Radar are certainly doing some great things. I encourage you guys to go out, click the links in the show notes, grab one yourself, grab one for your team, whatever you think is best there. So thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, my name’s Ryan Knuppel and we’ll have a… Hope you have a safe and great week. Talk to you soon. All right. Bye-bye.

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