Sizzle or Steak? First thoughts on the Veo 2

With much fanfare and a sprinkling of Apple-esque presentation style, yesterday Veo announced their second-generation AI camera, the Veo 2. As a football fan and a tech operator/early adopter who’s filmed over 150 matches with the first generation Veo camera and more recently taken delivery of a Pixellot Air camera, I think I’m pretty well-placed to evaluate new products in this field.?So here goes…

Prior to the launch and without any insider knowledge, my hunch was saying Live Streaming and Player Analytics. Here's what was announced yesterday, starting with the respective costs depending on your account type…

Veo 2 Pricing:

The price of the Veo 2 is ￡899 GBP and the existing Veo (1) ￡699. So at first glance, this is a cheaper hardware price compared to the Veo 1. However, this hardware price reduction looks to be offset by additional monthly subscriptions. Using the 'Club' account to demonstrate pricing, the monthly fee is ￡55. Access to the new Analytics features (explained in more detail later) is ￡10 a month (seems expensive!) and Live Streaming is ￡25. So, the year one cost for the Veo 2 comes out just shy of ￡2k, at ￡1,979 (excluding the tripod). Here’s the pricing table.

Is it expensive? This is interesting because the market is nascent and the tech is cool. Veo’s are increasingly seen at grassroots matches, more so at elite youth levels such as the JPL and EJA (in the UK) and the market is nearing the point of camera-envy meaning clubs are buying the kit to keep up with the Joneses. I’ve heard countless stories of parents seeing a camera at a match, watching the game link afterward, and then asking the manager if the team/club can get one. Some teams directly fund the purchase, others do fund-raising and some lucky teams have a parent that puts their hand into their pocket to buy one. So, price to a point is a lesser issue and inelastic if the team decides they have to get one.

Live Streaming

This was the major theme of the launch and on paper looks like an appealing option for grassroots and semi-pro clubs, enabling fans to watch games remotely. Access to matches is via the new app (and I assume also on the desktop) and offers the additional feature of monetising viewers - charging them to watch.?

Veo is charging ￡25 a month for clubs to use the Live Streaming feature but don't forget you'll also need to insert a SIM card into the camera to enable the broadcast, thus adding circa ￡20 - ￡40 of additional monthly cost unless you can hop onto a local Wifi network. Or, maybe you can insert the SIM from an existing phone during the match to negate having a dedicated SIM just for the camera?

Live Streaming is an interesting new field for grassroots football and opens up a debate of feature vs. benefit - is it a genuinely useful benefit to users or is it more of launching a feature because it's now technically possible to do it?

Who is the target audience for Veo Live Streaming and can it be monetised? Taking the example of a U13s grassroots team, the streaming audience is parents (or players) not able to attend a game. Additionally, it’s grandparents and other family members who might live too far away to attend the game in person. These are not ‘fans’ they're ‘family’. Would they pay to watch the match? Maybe, but not much. They might be willing to spend a few pounds in the interest of generating a bit of cash for the team but I think price sensitivity is very high for this cohort and certainly not more than ￡5 a match and my gut tells me the pricing sweet-spot is around ￡2.?

Then there’s the subject of audience size - how many people per team would pay for each match? I think this is a single-digit market per grassroots match in the UK. I mention the UK as a market here because I think the US is actually the key market for Live Streaming particularly with the concept of ‘Travel Teams’, driving several hours to play matches and therefore leaving a lot of family members (the remote audience) at home.?

Is the semi-pro market low-hanging fruit for Veo Live Streaming? Yes and No. Yes because the audience consists more of ‘Fans’ than ‘Family’ and fans are comfortable spending money to watch their team. To a degree, it’s also a ‘No’ based on the price comparison between paying to watch remotely vs. watching in person. Semi-pro clubs would prefer to have fans attending matches in person because of the ‘Burger aspect’ - fans pay to get into a match and then spend more money on food and drinks, multiplied if a parent brings their kids to watch as well. But, don’t forget about away fans and away matches. If a team is playing away and fans can’t afford to travel to the match (or don’t have the time) then Live Streaming away matches is a potential option for semi-pro clubs, with a suggested price point around ￡5.?

Unfortunately, there’s a potential spanner in the works for UK semi-pro clubs with the reported re-introduction of streaming restrictions for clubs at steps 1 - 6 meaning non-league clubs are not permitted to broadcast 3pm kick-offs.?

So, overall I’m not sure the business model in the UK for monetising Live Streaming currently adds up and I see it as more of a ‘cool feature’ rather than a ‘useful benefit’. Veo has announced Live Streaming as a 'Game-Changer' but I'm unsure which game it's going to change.

The size of the addressable market is small and I think it’s unlikely that grassroots teams would make enough money from broadcasting matches to offset the monthly fee and extra SIM cost. Semi-pro clubs have the Saturday streaming bans which means only midweek games could be covered. Even then, how many fans would pay to watch? 5% - 20% (max) is my feel here and then don’t forget they all won’t pay separately, they’ll meet up and watch together just paying a single fee.?

Veo Analytics

Credit to Veo for introducing AI capabilities to match recordings. The ability for the camera to produce recordings by automatically following the ball and identifying goals scored is awesome. But, semi-pro clubs and to a growing degree the more elite-level grassroots clubs want more analysis at a player-centric level.?

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Vidswap platform that uses a mix of AI and manual data logging and it’s very obvious this is where the market is going - providing coaches with metrics such as pass counts and pass completion %s, along with shot analysis and other related stats. So, I was really keen to find out the new Veo analytics features, which are as follows:

Match momentum graph: This appears to measure comparative possession but I think in reality is assigning a fluctuating graph line depending on where the ball is on the pitch - momentum grows for a team if they’re in the opposition half. Whilst this looks interesting I’m unconvinced of the value this provides the coach, primarily because he’s at the match, on the side-line, watching the game live.?

2D maps: This is a picture-in-picture top-down view of the game with each player shown as a moving dot. Fantastic! - the AI software is now visualising players and this sure does looks cool. But, as with the Match momentum graph, Again, I’m not sure 2D maps adds anything a coach can use during the match that they can’t already obtain by being there. There seems to be a trend occurring here...

Heatmaps: The new Veo Analytics also creates heatmaps for each team. I don’t see much value in team heatmaps - they need to be per player if they’re going to be of any use. I can’t see an option to see player heatmaps but surely this is possible if the camera is tracking every player? Add this feature please Veo.?

Statistical Overview: Please tell me this is tracking passes, completions and other player-interaction events!? Unfortunately not. Instead, it’s now tracking corners, penalties and throw-ins (and also auto-creating tagged clips for these events). Whilst the auto-detection of these game moments in addition to tagging goals will definitely make the user experience of watching a match easier, there is little actionable insight a coach can take from the Statistical Overview.?

Veo is charging ￡10 a month for access to Veo Analytics and the Veo Editor. At present based on the features presented at launch I struggle to see the value in paying an extra tenner to see team-centric statistics and tagged dead-ball events. Give me player-level metrics analysed by AI and you can have my money.?

With advances in Computer Vision and Machine Learning capabilities in the works, I expect to see much more advanced player analysis from AI cameras in the near future. As it currently stands, I classify all of the new analytics tools as features more than benefits and an example of doing something because it can be done as opposed to doing something because it’s of use and value to the end-user.?

The New Camera

Let’s not forget about the hardware! The Veo engineers have moved the hardware up a level, as you would expect them to do. Some of the new product specs are visible improvements and others are behind the scenes, or rather, inside the unit.?

There’s a new cooling unit designed to lower the temperate of the camera. I’ve often noticed how hot the Veo 1 would get in sunlight and whilst I never thought this would cause any issues, I guess it’s better to keep cameras cooler, so fair enough.?

Next up are Hydrophobic lens covers, meaning that water just runs off the lens and doesn’t ‘stick’. This is a good thing and many a time I’ve had to dry the lens at half-time or give the tripod a kick to make the rain run off.?

As the new Veo 2 offers live-streaming then one would assume there’s more ‘tech in the box’ and this is evident with the inclusion of a new NVIDIA chipset that’s apparently the ‘smallest AI supercomputer in the world’. So, it’s no longer just a box with a battery, storage and 2 camera lenses. Veo also claim a higher pixel count with the Veo 2. Excellent news! We all want clearer pictures and I hope the improved resolution will address the blurriness when zooming hard into a Directed Highlight.?

The next hardware feature is an interesting one - improved microphones. I’ve often been asked by coaches and fans ‘does that thing record sound?’. Yes, it does, but it also loves recording wind. This now appears to have been addressed with wind-reduction and directional microphones to pick up more of the on-pitch sounds - I’m really looking forward to seeing the improved audio features of the Veo 2.?

In other news, the battery life appears to be the same as the Veo 1 (approx. 4 hours) but the storage has increased to 128GB - about six match recordings. This is good but only useful if you can charge the camera whilst it’s recording (which you now can).?

In Summary

Well done to Veo for creating the market for AI cameras into the grassroots football market. Of course, they had to bring out a new camera and keep pushing the envelope. Are the new features of genuine benefit to coaches and football teams? Some yes, some no. Live Streaming on paper is awesome but the vertical markets it aims to target differ in opportunity size and value. The jury is yet to deliberate on Live Streaming but let’s remember this is effectively a brand-new market and time will tell - I want this to be a success.

Are the new Analytics of value? Sure, they are interesting but having spoken to coaches well-versed in player analytics and coupled with my own knowledge of this field I think they’re an underwhelming feature suite with more form over function. I know more can be done in the field of player-centric AI analysis - I’m working on my own ideas in this field and I know other companies including Veo are doing the same. This will get much better quite quickly.?

Will I be getting the Veo 2? Absolutely! I really want to figure out the optimal use-cases and business models for Live Streaming and I’m keen to see a better picture quality. Veo Analytics isn’t rocking my boat at present and although I have other options available to me to provide greater player data Veo really needs to beef up the metrics harvested from its AI.

Overall, this market is a rising tide and coaches with an interest in more than just the match broadcast/recording need to (budget permitting) have access to new tech in order to make better decisions.

(Images courtesy of Veo website).