Sporting Innovations will spend $20 million renovating a historic Kansas City, Mo. building to become its new headquarters and plans to create 120 new jobs in Kansas City over the next three years. Company officials announced that news today alongside Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon in a press conference at the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts.
Spun off from Major League Soccer franchise Sporting Kansas City, Sporting Innovations makes technology designed to enhance the stadium experience for sports fans.
The company, which officially launched last September, currently employs about 50 people and has offices in Kansas City’s Crossroads District. The company will make its new headquarters at the Hanna Rubber building (above) at 1517 Baltimore Ave., which the Kansas City Star reports will be renovated by June 2013.
Per a press release from the Governor’s office, the state of Missouri could subsidize part of the move if Sporting Innovations meets certain job creation and investment criteria.
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“I am pleased that another cutting-edge organization like Sporting Innovations has become the latest company to make a significant capital investment while planning to create new jobs in the Show-Me State,” Nixon (left) said in the release. “This is a company that is growing by using exciting new developments in technology to make information more accessible for sports fans at the venues. We are glad to have them grow in Missouri.”
The ownership group for Sporting Kansas City includes Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson, the co-founders of Kansas City health care technology giant Cerner. Illig told the The Star that he expects Sporting Innovations to provide the same sort of technological boost to sports that Cerner has to health care:
“What we see in sports is similar to healthcare,” he said. “You have stadiums with 30 different technologies that don’t talk to each other. This will enhance the fan experience and be a platform for innovation.”
Sporting Innovations is developing technology that enables fans to do everything from watching live video feeds on their smartphones from various camera angles to ordering apparel online from their seat at a game.
Sasha Victorine of Sporting Innovations told Silicon Prairie News in a July interview that the company’s technology was paving the way for a period of potentially sizable growth.
“The next six months will be very exciting times for Sporting Innovations as we continue to build our Fan360 platform and finalize our initial engagements and road map the future,” Victorine said. “Increasingly, the news of our success and progress has led to many more market opportunities which we will pursue to expand the Fan360 platform globally.”
Credits: Hanna Rubber photo from planningkc.com. Photo of Nixon from governor.mo.com.
