When we founded Metrica Sports in an Amsterdam pub seven years ago, we were three football fans who felt disillusioned with the paths our careers were taking, who had the beginnings of a plan, but we were ultimately driven by a fundamental passion for football.
For each of us, sport has created memories that we will cherish forever.
Rubén will never forget the moment Andrés Iniesta cut across the ball to guide it into the top corner at Stamford Bridge in 2009, a moment he celebrated with so much excitement that the doctor recommended he spent a week resting in bed.
For Enzo, River Plate’s relegation to the second division was a watershed moment, making him appreciate the great times and loyalty football creates even more. And for Bruno, accompanying Rubén to the Mestalla to watch Barcelona play Real Madrid, a day featuring fantastic paella, beautiful football and brilliant company, is a moment he will always remember for the way it strengthened his bond of friendship with Rubén.
These are our moments, and they happened to be around football, but if you are reading this you will have your own memories, around the sport you love. This is what sports should ultimately be about: community, passion, and relationships.
And so, it is with great pride that we are announcing the official release of PLAY by Metrica Sports’ Free Plan, which is free to download to anybody, anywhere in the world.
We know that there is a vast community of people out there who can do amazing work if they have access to the right technology, and that is why we are making it available now, completely free.
Our vision is that video and data analysis should be used at every level of the game. There is still a long way to go till we really get there, but this is our first of many steps into making this vision a reality.
PLAY paid plans are currently being used by teams at various levels, including the Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccan, Bosnian and Paraguayan Federations, clubs such as Seattle Sounders in the US, Levante in Spain, 6 clubs in Brazil, 5 in Turkey, Stockport County in the UK, and many more all over the world, in all continents.
While elite and professional clubs take advantage of the full feature set of Play and a lot of automation, there are a lot of people out there who do not need them all to do the work they care about. The free plan (Play Basic) we are releasing now was conceived for those users. We want to empower them with all the tools they need to take their work to the next level. The Basic plan provides users with some incredible features to overlay dynamic and static visualizations onto video and allows everyone to code, visualize and present their video analysis like the elite teams do.
We want to change the whole market. We want to level the playing field. We want to keep on building software that the best teams in the world want to use, but we also want that software to be accessible to everyone.
Why shouldn’t some friends playing in the park be able to use the same tools as the international superstars they idolize every week?
We hope you all enjoy Play Basic free plan, and we’re looking forward to seeing the analysis, memories and friendships that you, the community, will create along the way.
Thanks,
Rubén, Bruno and Enzo.