AP Photo/Dan Gelston
- Dick's Sporting Goods has something unusual for a retailer: an app to manage youth team sports.
- The service now boasts 5 million users who spend a half hour per day on the platform.
- Dick's says the business will bring in $100 million this year, in addition to driving retail sales.
Dick's Sporting Goods has long offered youth athletes and coaches a number of spiral-bound ways to organize teams and keep score.
But in recent years, the company has been investing in something unusual for a retailer: an AI-powered app to manage youth team sports, with livestream video and auto-generated highlight reels from games.
Now, the aptly named Game Changer platform is driving real revenue with some notable engagement, Dick's CEO Lauren Hobart told investors on the company's earnings call Wednesday.
Hobart said last quarter saw 5 million users who spent a half hour per day on the platform, and Game Changer says it supports over a million teams and over 7 million games per year.
Dick's CFO Navdeep Gupta said the business segment will bring in a highly profitable $100 million in revenue this year, but the real kicker for the company is the lift for retail sales online and in-store, especially among loyalty program members.
"Athletes that are both GameChanger user and a Scorecard user have 2x the revenue profile for just a Scorecard user," the CFO said. "That indicates also that the level of engagement that we have with these multi-channel athletes is actually really, really exciting and interesting to us as we look to the long-term opportunity for this platform."
Initially developed for so-called "diamond sports" like baseball and softball, Game Changer has been rolling out new AI-powered features to better support sports like basketball, soccer, volleyball, and more, bringing a kind of ESPN+ viewing experience to far-flung family members and fans.