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Golf pro Geordie explains how his cutting-edge sports app could benefit teams such as Newcastle United

By Sports app

Gosforth-based golf pro champions new app for pros and sport fanatics

A Geordie golf professional at the center of a cutting-edge social and professional sports app has explained how he hopes teams such as Newcastle United can make the most of his services.

Steve Bainbridge has been an elite golf professional and coach for over 34 years.

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The Gosforth-born golfer runs two academies in the area at the Northumberland Golf Club and the Golf Hub, as well as much further afield.

Steve said: “I’ve been a golf pro for 35 years now.

“I turned pro right out of school at 16 and worked with tour players for about 14 years.

“Once I was done doing my time on the tour, I looked to start golf academies.

“We started in London and then expanded to Portugal, where I moved in 2016 to set this one up before returning in 2019.”

He had gone from one-on-one coaching to working with groups of people who planted the seed of the app, called oneXp, in Steve’s head.

He explained: “The hardest thing for me was, after coaching for eight straight hours, coming home and doing another two hours of client communication and watching the swings and analyzing them – i was spending so much extra time working and not with my family and not even giving the best service.

“The concept came from wanting to make my life and my staff’s life easier but, fundamentally, to better communicate with customers and give them a better experience.”

The app is already up and running, but has a long way to go with Steve launching it as a social platform in May.

A photo of the technical side of the application in action

He said: “At the moment we are very much a coach and a client, but the concept is basically to become an adult sports Facebook.

“I’m 51, I’m crazy about sports and I hate Facebook. Sport is my life, my job, my interest, I watch it, I play it and I’m at St. James’ Park all the time.

“I want a platform that’s relevant to me and that’s what we’re trying to build.

“Video is still available, but you can talk to friends and do everything Facebook does too.”

Steve is a huge sports fan and has big plans for the app’s growth

For those who want to dabble in the technical side of the app, Steve, who supports Magpies, gave an overview of what clubs such as Newcastle United could use it for.

He said: “If we take a penalty taker, Callum Wilson for example.

“Callum is going to take a penalty and in training you would have a camera behind him and a camera in front of him.

“When he was practicing taking them, you would press a button on your watch to record and stop recording, and then those two streams would show up on the same screen.

The app could help professionals such as Callum Wilson (Image: Getty Images)

“If you hit the sync button, they go live and sync together. It almost creates a 3D view.

“The real reason we incorporated heart rate is to allow coaches to monitor technique under pressure.

“Let’s say he’s training with Dubravka tomorrow before the weekend game and his heart rate is 95 bpm.

“Then the coach on the side will film him taking a penalty against Liverpool on Saturday, and the heartbeat will go… it’s 170 bpm.

“From their data analytics platform, they can pull that out and start monitoring anxiety and pressure.”

HalaPlay, the Fantasy Sports app owned by Nazara, plans to increase INR by 18 Cr

By Sports app

According to a file, the company’s board of directors has given its approval in principle to HalaPlay, a subsidiary of Nazara, to raise funds from identified investors.

In a separate development, Nazara purchased an additional 1.40% stake worth INR 96.16 lakh in its subsidiary Absolute Sports Private Limited (ASPL), which operates Sportskeeda.com

Following the transaction, Nazara’s stake in Sportskeeda increased from 63.90% to 65.30%

HalaPlay, the fantasy sports platform owned by Nazara Technologies, plans to raise over 18 Cr INR, according to the listed company’s filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.

According to deposit, the company’s board of directors has given its agreement in principle to HalaPlay, a subsidiary of Nazara, to raise funds from identified investors, whose names were not disclosed in the file.

“After the completion of said transaction, the Company’s (Nazara) stake in HalaPlay will be diluted from 74.02% to 64.70%, on a fully diluted basis. In addition, there is no change in the management and control of HalaPlay upon completion of the aforementioned transaction, ”the file read.

Nazara did not respond to Inc42 questions about the names of the investors who supported HalaPlay during its last funding round.

Nazara buys more shares in Sportskeeda

In the same file, it is revealed that Nazara purchased an additional 1.40% stake worth INR 96.16 lakh in its subsidiary Absolute Sports Private Limited (ASPL), which operates the sports news site Sportskeeda .com. Following the transaction, Nazara’s stake in ASPL increased from 63.90% to 65.30%.

Meanwhile, Nazara, a publicly traded Indian gaming company, recorded an 84% year-over-year (YoY) increase in its consolidated revenue, which stood at INR 454.2 Cr for the fiscal year. 2020-21 (FY21).

The gamified learning segment saw 820% revenue growth from INR 19.1 Cr in FY20 to INR 175.8 Cr in FY21. Likewise, esports revenue more than doubled to 170.1 Cr INR in FY21, compared to 84.2 Cr INR in the previous fiscal year.

Revenues from freemium, telecom subscriptions and real money games were 19.5 Cr INR, 74.9 Cr INR and 13.9 Cr INR respectively in fiscal year 21.

Founded by Vikash Mittersain and Nitish Mittersain in 2000, Nazara is a diverse gaming and sports media platform with a presence in India and global markets such as Africa and North America. The company specializes in interactive games, esports, and the gamified early learning ecosystem, and is well known for its variety of products, including the World Cricket Championship (WCC) and CarromClash (mobile games), Kiddopia (gamified early learning), Nodwin and Sportskeeda (esports and esports media, respectively) and Halaplay and Qunami (fantasy games and skill-based trivia).

Last month the company initial public offering (IPO) received a strong response with institutional and private investors.