In a significant development for the volleyball community, sports technology leader Hudl has acquired Balltime, the innovative AI-driven volleyball analytics platform. This strategic move represents a pivotal moment for volleyball technology, promising to revolutionize how teams at all levels analyze, improve, and engage with the sport.
In a recent episode of the Profluence Podcast, hosted by Scott Garber and Andrew Petcash, Balltime founder Dan Banon and Hudl’s Tarryn Moss discussed the acquisition, the evolving volleyball landscape, and what this partnership means for the future of the sport. Let’s dive into the key insights from their conversation and explore how this merger is set to transform volleyball analytics.
The Origin Story of Balltime: From Passion Project to Industry Innovator
Like many successful sports tech startups, Balltime began as a solution to a personal pain point. Dan Banon, a dedicated volleyball player, explained how his co-founder Tom created Balltime as a passion project born from frustration.
“The inception story is a really cool one,” Banon shared. “My co-founder, Tom, is also a volleyball player—beach, to be more specific—and he started Balltime as a passion project. He always recorded his games and just couldn’t stand having to sift through hours of footage to find the moments that would enable him to become a better player.”
The first version of Balltime offered a simple but valuable solution: processing game footage to remove downtime, making it easier for players to locate and review their plays. From there, the team began developing machine learning models to automatically identify actions and players, gradually expanding the platform’s capabilities.
What began as a tool to solve one player’s problem evolved as Banon and Tom connected through the beach volleyball community. Through market research and user interviews, they identified a genuine need in the market and incorporated the company, initially offering individual subscriptions for a basic product.
As Balltime grew, the team expanded their focus to include products for teams, with particular attention to youth sports in the United States. “The youth sports ecosystem is incredibly rich and dynamic in the States,” Banon noted. “There are a lot of pain points and a lot of people that you can create value for.”
Building Community: The Secret Ingredient to Product-Market Fit
A particularly fascinating aspect of Balltime’s success story is how they leveraged community building as a core strategy for product development and market penetration. The team created a private Facebook group that grew to 3,600 members, providing a direct line of communication with users and establishing a valuable feedback loop.
“The Ball Time community group started as just the very first resource to have the first kind of feedback that would come in on the product,” Banon explained. “Over time, as people started organically joining, it became this amazing open community where people would come and post feedback, product requests, and sometimes support.”
This approach created a virtuous cycle: users would request features and see them implemented within 24-36 hours, building tremendous brand equity and engagement. Beyond its impact on product development, the community fostered meaningful connections with users.
“Beyond the impact on the product, you get to be in direct contact with your users and customers in a very close and personal way,” Banon reflected. “That’s something that is helpful from a business perspective, but it’s also just so nice if you’re working on something to have that direct line of communication with your users, especially seeing as we’re all volleyball players.”
This community-driven approach highlights an important lesson for sports tech entrepreneurs: building direct relationships with users doesn’t just improve your product—it makes the entire journey more enjoyable and meaningful.
The Volleyball Market: Unprecedented Growth and Opportunity
The timing of this acquisition coincides with remarkable growth in volleyball participation and interest across the United States and globally. Tarryn Moss of Hudl provided valuable context about why volleyball represents such an exciting opportunity.
“Hudl’s headquarters is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and so I think we’ve been a volleyball state in a lot of ways for a number of years here with the success of the Huskers,” Moss explained. She referenced the attendance-breaking event at Memorial Stadium, which showcased the surging enthusiasm for volleyball.
The data backs up this excitement. Hudl now serves over 400,000 volleyball users across 79 countries. In 2024 alone, the platform provided data from nearly half a million volleyball matches, supporting over 40,000 high schools, clubs, colleges, and national teams.
Banon added that participation rates in high school volleyball have been progressing steadily, with multiple professional leagues launching in the U.S. “There’s going to be a trickle-down effect over time where the more exposure they get, it’s like a virtuous circle. There’s going to be more and more high school level players,” he predicted.
This growth isn’t limited to the United States. As Banon noted, “Internationally, there’s also just been a general kind of growth of the sport.” The democratization of access to advanced analytical tools through platforms like Balltime and Hudl is poised to accelerate this global expansion.
Technical Evolution: From Beach to Indoor, Youth to Pro
Balltime’s technical journey offers interesting insights into the challenges of sports analytics. The platform began with beach volleyball not just because of the founders’ background, but also for practical reasons.
“From a purely technical perspective, it’s easier to do multi-object tracking, multiplayer tracking, action identification when you’re doing it with two players on the court rather than with six,” Banon explained. “Starting off with beach was kind of a logical way to get started.”
As the technology evolved, the team expanded to indoor volleyball and began addressing different market segments, from club teams to high schools and international competition. This flexibility allowed Balltime to match their product to the specific needs of each segment, creating tailored solutions that delivered genuine value.
The Acquisition Journey: Relationships Before Transactions
One of the most instructive aspects of the Balltime acquisition story is how it unfolded organically through relationship building rather than aggressive business development.
Moss recounted finding her first email to Banon: “I just want to connect and learn a little bit more about what y’all are doing and how we see this space.” As a former volleyball player herself, Moss remembered seeing Balltime’s setter tendencies feature and thinking, “that would have been amazing to have when I was playing.”
What began as a casual conversation between like-minded professionals with a shared passion gradually evolved into something more substantive. “That kind of generated from there to say, hey, I think we could do something pretty amazing together,” Moss explained.
Banon emphasized the natural progression of the relationship: “The first touch point was ‘we’ve been following you guys, it would be great to get to know each other.’ We popped on a few calls and had those very earnest conversations.”
He attributed this organic evolution to the culture of the sports tech industry: “Maybe it’s the common passion. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re all working on sports, so there’s that inherent passion there that these conversations are just super nice to have in this space.”
This approach—building relationships without immediate transactional expectations—stands in contrast to more aggressive acquisition strategies and appears to have contributed to the success of the deal. As Garber noted during the podcast, “Sports isn’t built on connections, it’s built on relationships… Just start forging relationships with no real expectations and they start to deliver in ways that you might not even expect down the road.”
Smart Fundraising: Creating Options Through Restraint
Another valuable insight for sports tech entrepreneurs emerged during the conversation around Balltime’s fundraising strategy. While many startups raise massive early rounds at inflated valuations, Balltime took a more measured approach.
“We maintained a fairly small team,” Banon explained. “Through Balltime’s journey, we ended up at 12 [people]. Everyone’s joining Hudl, which is super exciting. And even from a raising perspective, we did some fundraising, but I think we kept it fairly minimal.”
This restraint gave Balltime options when acquisition opportunities arose. As podcast host Andrew Petcash observed, raising at “more fair valuations for your company and not too much” creates a situation where “your investors still win, the founder can win, the employees can win, and then the acquirer can win.”
By contrast, companies that raise too much money at inflated valuations often find themselves with limited exit options, as the acquisition price needed to satisfy investors becomes unrealistic for potential acquirers.
Product Integration: Putting Users First
The acquisition presents both opportunities and challenges in merging Balltime’s technology with Hudl’s existing volleyball solutions. Moss outlined their user-centric approach to integration:
“One of the things that we’ve set up right away was sending out emails to everyone saying, ‘Hey, jump on a call with a product team member, let’s have a conversation about what you love about Balltime.'” This proactive outreach resulted in over 30 conversations with coaches and parents in just two weeks.
These conversations served multiple purposes: preserving beloved features, identifying integration opportunities, and keeping users engaged in the process. “Before we even set the road map, let’s figure out what people love,” Moss explained. “And then let’s figure out how do we do that and get people excited about what that future is.”
The integration leverages the complementary strengths of both platforms. Hudl brings scale, video uploading capabilities, recruiting networks, and comprehensive sports coverage. Balltime contributes volleyball expertise and advanced AI technology that delivers accurate analysis in near real-time.
“This AI technology is something that is incredibly strong,” Moss emphasized. “It’s accurate. It has that real-time or less-than-an-hour turnaround time. That is going to be a big impact from a perspective of how coaches, athletes, analysts all prepare for that next game or next practice.”
The Future: AI, Real-Time Data, and Professional Growth
Looking ahead, both Banon and Moss expressed excitement about the future of volleyball technology. The sport itself is experiencing unprecedented growth, with multiple professional leagues launching in the United States alone.
“The League One volleyball that started in January, there’s a new league that just got announced, there’s the PDF that’s starting,” Banon noted. “From that perspective, it’s super exciting to kind of see everything that’s happening.”
From a product perspective, the vision involves unifying Hudl’s various tools and creating a seamless experience from youth to professional levels. “There’s this incredible vision of unifying all of the different tools and products that Hudl has in its ecosystem and creating this kind of unified version from youth all the way to the pros,” Banon explained.
Moss identified several technological trends they’re monitoring closely, including advancements in AI capabilities, optical tracking for measuring human performance metrics like speed and distance, and real-time data analysis. “I think the real-time data is going to continue to drive the sport forward,” she predicted.
She also acknowledged the rapid pace of innovation: “I don’t know what AI is going to do in six months. We’ve been integrating some stuff on the LLM side, which is super exciting, getting those generative AI pieces and seeing those game summaries. But hey, there’s so much out there that we’re all going to learn together.”
Conclusion: A New Era for Volleyball Technology
The Hudl-Balltime acquisition represents more than just a business transaction—it signals volleyball’s entry into a new technological era. By combining Hudl’s scale and comprehensive sports platform with Balltime’s volleyball-specific AI capabilities, this partnership promises to accelerate innovation and improve the experience for players, coaches, and fans at all levels.
The story also offers valuable lessons for sports tech entrepreneurs and investors about community building, relationship development, strategic fundraising, and user-centric product integration. As volleyball continues its growth trajectory worldwide, technology will play an increasingly vital role in shaping how the sport is played, coached, and experienced.
For volleyball enthusiasts eager to learn more about these developments, both companies recommend visiting their joint landing page (searchable via “Hudl plus Balltime”) or joining the Balltime community group on Facebook, where the conversation about volleyball’s technological future continues to evolve.
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