New feature: Direct your own highlights

The beginning of 2020 has probably been the most hectic and eventful period in Veo’s lifetime. In this blog post, we look back on 90 days that felt like a decade.

In 2020’s first quarter, we sold sports camera systems to more than 60 countries on all continents. We introduced Veo to seven new sports. And we launched a total redesign of our platform and several new features.

But still, we’re arguably going to remember the first quarter of 2020 for something that, in fact, didn’t really have much to do with Veo. In March, team sports all over the world were locked down and so was Veo’s headquarter in Copenhagen to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. More on that later.

Veo’s going to the US
It feels like a decade ago today, but back in January, Veo sent a full team of sales and marketing people to Baltimore in the US, to participate in the world’s largest soccer summit – United Soccer Coaches Convention.

More than 1,000 people visited our booth during the three days and it was amazing to experience the drive and ambition of american soccer. There’s definitely a bright future for our friends in the US. While most of our sales is done remotely via e-commerce or phone, it’s always a pleasure to get to meet people head-to-head and discuss what’s on people’s minds. We’re looking forward to meeting you all at conferences and summits when the world of team sports opens again!

New platform and features for everybody
On Veo’s platform, coaches, analysts and players can rewatch and analyse their matches and share highlights with teammates, friends and family. The platform had a total makeover in the beginning of the new year after a design progress that involved a lot of feedback from our users.

“The new design is the first major redesign of the Veo universe that we’ve made. The former design has served us well, but it was time for something new“, says Kawus Nouri, Head of Product at Veo.

Read more about how Veo got a new look.

The option to draw simple shapes and lines on the screen in our analysis platform has for a long time been one of our most requested features. So we were very excited to introduce Draw on screen in February. 

Learn more about draw on screen here.

Here at Veo, we have for a time wanted to give every player the possibility to show their great skills in their own customisable profile page. That’s why we introduced Player profiles earlier in March. Every player on every team can create their own profile and select the highlights they want to showcase to the world. With a personal player profile, players can now easily share your best moments with friends, family, scouts and even college or university recruiters.

Learn more about player profiles here.

We’ll keep working on introducing new features and possibilities on Veo’s analysis platform. The feedback and wishes from users play a huge role in this and luckily, our customers are extremely engaged in the development of our platform.

Veo’s platform can be found on app.veo.co.

New sports
Since we introduced Veo to the world of football nearly two years ago, we’ve received countless inquiries about the use of Veo for other sports. And earlier this year, we introduced Veo to seven new sports; basketball, rugby, hockey, handball, volleyball, lacrosse and American football.

Behind the scenes lies a massive work with tuning the artificial intelligence that detects the ball to be able to find other balls on other pitch types than just footballs on football fields. And in February, after literally thousands of tests, we opened for these seven new sports (and their families, e.g. the whole hockey family of sports).

Read more about our introduction to seven new sports in the Veo family.

Closing down the office
In the beginning of March, we decided to lock down Veo’s main office in Copenhagen to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. This means that all developers and engineers, all administrative staff and all employees in the customer support and commercial departments were sent home to work remotely. All business travels were cancelled and all meetings with co-workers, partners and collaborators were rescheduled and rearranged to video meetings.

On the customer oriented side of business, we’ve introduced the option to make a deposit now and then pay the whole price when customers need the camera. We understand that purchasing sports cameras probably isn’t on top of everybody’s minds. However, there is a life after the coronavirus and the new season is approaching. In just a few months, preparation for the new season will commence and we want everyone to be ready.

All in all, it’s been the most hectic quarter in Veo’s history. However, we’re still here, we still make our cameras available for order and purchase, so if you want to get in touch with us to hear more about our camera solution, if you have any questions whatsoever or just feel like having a chat about sports, feel free to book a call! 

Thank you for your time and stay safe!

Book a call

Showcase your favourite highlights with our new player profile feature.

Here at Veo, we want to give you the possibility to show your great skills in your own customisable profile page. Every player on every team can create their own profile and select the highlights they want to showcase to the world.

With your own personal player profile, you can easily share your best moments with friends, family, scouts and even college or university recruiters.

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up your own player profile with your highlights.

How to set up your player profile

1. Log in to your Veo account at app.veo.co

2. Click the menu in the upper right corner

3. Click “Profile Settings”:

4. Profile settings page will open. This is where you write information about yourself, which will show on your page. Add bio, birthday, nationality, preferred foot, preferred jersey number, favourite position, and the username:

5. Click Save when you’re done:

6. Once you save the profile, your URL is generated as well as a direct link to your profile:

You can also access your profile from the menu, by clicking on “My profile”:

7. At first, the profile will be empty. How to showcase your favourite highlights to it?

On your home page at app.veo.co, there’s tab “Mentions”, where all of your highlights (the ones you are tagged in) appear:

8. When you find one you’d like to show on your profile, click the three dots next to it and click on “Add to my showcase”:

9. That’s it! It has now been added to your profile:

You can always add more highlights to your profile or edit your initial settings.

We hope you’ll enjoy this feature, and feel free to reach out to support@veo.co with questions and feedback.

Like everyone else, I am overjoyed to see the back of the winter months in the UK. Three storms, cold, wet, windy and dark — it’s been a pretty abysmal start to the year. 

However, as a football fan, there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel in the shape of the crescendoing Premier League season and the bi-yearly excitement of England at another major tournament. As the England players prepare for warm up games against Denmark, Austria and Romania, there is another National England team with high hopes at this year’s European championships.  

Owen Coyle Jr., Head Coach of the England Amputee Football Team, is preparing his players for the Cracow based European Amputee Football Championship 2020. However, the EAFA’s success at major tournaments in recent years (Runners up Euro 2016) has been built on more humble foundations when compared with other England national teams across sport. 

Pre-tournament, each player is set an individual fundraising target of £1500, so that they may compete at this year’s competition. It’s all hands on deck to not only make sure these players are physically and mentally ready to compete in a high performance environment, but also financially able to support European and World Cup entries.

With a smaller budget there are always challenges, but Owen and his team are hellbent on providing the very best experience for their players at First Team level all the way through to the EAFA junior leagues. Camera operators and full time analysts were out of reach, but the Veo solution that allows for automated match filming and goal recognition was not. 

One year on from purchase, I caught up with Owen to see how everything was going with Veo and I was delighted in his positive review, citing the affordable and portable solution as a reason behind improved player performance. He is excited for the European Championships in September and firmly believes England have a chance of going all the way and knocking the formidable (and fully professional) Turkey team, off top spot. 

We’d like to wish everyone at the EAFA the best of luck this summer and who knows, we may have two footballing sides from England celebrating international success!

Veo Technologies is proud to announce that we have entered into a formal partnership with Sports Recruiting USA (SRUSA), the world’s leading U.S. college soccer recruiting agency.

In the past decade, since the agency’s creation, the SRUSA has helped more than 2,000 athletes and worked with over 3,000+ coaches, making it a great partner for Veo in our efforts to – first and foremost – make sure that soccer games are recorded, so that players can significantly increase their chances of being recruited though high-quality video footage of their skills.

For the SRUSA, the partnership will provide a new opportunity to film at all events to help their clients be reviewed easier by prospective colleges in the USA, and founder Chris Cousins says about the partnership:

“I’ve followed Veo since they came into the market and I’m very excited they have decided to partner with us. Having this technology at all our events, and on hand for other client based games, gives our staff the freedom to know the game is being filmed automatically, but also after the game, we are able to review the footage in many different formats and angles.”

Lee Hudson, Veo’s U.S. Market Manager, says:

“At Veo, we are very excited to partner with SRUSA, one of the USA’s leading college recruitment agencies. Our company’s mission is to ensure that games are recorded so players can analyze their performance using the power of video technology. And now Veo and SRUSA can combine both film and player recruitment to make this possible.

With so many athletes not having enough video footage of themselves for college recruiters to view, we believe this partnership bridges the gap between what you hear about a player and what you see in the player.

With Veo’s technology and the SRUSA’s ability to recruit future college athletes, we’re excited for the players of tomorrow to be able to be recognized by a larger audience.”

We look forward to seeing our new partnership unfold!

We hereby present our newest feature that allows you to draw on the screen. This blog post is about how to make the most out of the draw on screen feature in the Veo platform.

Draw on screen has been at the top of most requested features among our customers and we’re very excited to introduce it. Read on for full instructions on how to use it and how can you enhance the analysis with this useful tool.

Basics

• You can use three shapes: arrow, rectangle and line. 
• Draw on screen is a part of highlight creation. The option for drawing on screen will appear, when marking highlights.
• Highlights are (for now) only possible to be created in the follow-cam (broadcast) view, and the same goes for draw on screen.
• Drawings do not appear on the download version of the highlight.

Let’s get into it

Let’s go through the steps for creating a highlight that involves drawing on screen.

1. Click “Mark highlight”:

2. The highlight editor will open. The “Draw on screen” icon appears in the bottom right corner. Click on it:

3. The draw on screen editor will appear as well as an additional pointer in the highlight timeline:

4. Adjust the pointer as it fits you and you’re ready to go. Choose the shape and the colour you want to apply (arrow is chosen by default) and then click and drag (use the mouse or trackpad) to or around the object:

5. Click the checkmark in the draw on screen editor to complete the action and save the drawing:

6. The drawing gets saved and the pointer will change the colour:

You can continue adding drawings within the same highlight and then save the highlight when you’re done.

The highlight containing drawing(s) will appear in the highlight thread on the right side of the video player with the drawing icon next to it:

When you play the highlight in the follow-cam view, the video will stop when there’s drawing and you can press space or the play button to continue watching:

I hope you’ll enjoy this new addition and we will be happy to hear your feedback at support@veo.co.

We have big news for you! After being a “football camera” for more than four years, Veo is now ready to transit into a sports camera.

Earlier this week, we introduced seven new sports into the Veo family:
Basketball, rugby, hockey, American football, handball, volleyball and lacrosse.

A frequently asked question
Since we launched Veo for football commercially approximately 18 months ago, one of the questions we’ve heard most often has been ‘does it work for other sports?’ 

From the beginning of this company’s lifetime, we’ve known that one day we would expand from football to more sports. So we’re extremely proud to present this achievement to everyone. And we’re looking forward to welcoming all the new sports to the world of AI-powered sports recordings and to our newly designed analysis platform.

Seven new sports (and their families)
The number seven is often considered as a lucky number. There are seven days in a week, seven colors in a rainbow and seven continents on the earth. And now, Veo introduces seven new sports.

Or do we? Actually, we open the world to automated sports recording for a lot more sports. How is that? Let’s take “Hockey” as an example. Under the umbrella that we call hockey, we find ice hockey, field hockey, floorball, bandy and even roller hockey (and we don’t limit to these sports).

Basketball is now possible and so are variations like netball which is prevalent especially in the UK. We have dared to group Gaelic football with rugby’s many variations. Veo works for all of them.

For the last months, we’ve been reading up on new expressions like three-metres-through (handball), alligator arms (lacrosse) and dummy runners (rugby), so we can give the best help and support for our many new customers. And even if you don’t find your sport on the list, you can contact us and we can find out how Veo can help your club and your sport!

Find more info about each sport here:
American football
Basketball
Handball
Hockey
Lacrosse
Rugby
Volleyball

The winter break is slowly coming to an end and the football year 2020 is rapidly commencing. In Veo, we can see that you guys have started the year with a ferocious appetite for recording your football matches and the year has already seen a new record for weekly recordings with over 2,000 matches and training sessions recorded in the third week of the year. And this is despite the fact that a big part of our users are situated in Scandinavia where the winter break is hardly over yet.

For everyone in the Northern hemisphere, we can look forward to warmer times, greener grass and increasing daylight. For many football clubs, approximately 1,500 to be more accurate, the new year has also meant a new design of the Veo platform*. 

In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to some of the thoughts behind the new design and present some of the new functions.

*The platform can be found at app.veo.co. Not a user yet? Watch the demo match.

Veo’s research
In Veo, we are constantly developing the user experience. In our office in Copenhagen, the majority of the employees are working with engineering and developing. All research we do has the purpose of improving the user experience and making it easier for each and every user of the platform to review the recordings—from the tech savvy analyst to the tracksuit wearing Sunday League coach and the Instagram addicted teenage player.

Our research includes developing the 180 degrees camera, the artificial intelligence that follows the ball and the platform where you can watch and analyse the recordings you make on the field.

Learn more about our work with artificial intelligence here.

As you may know, we launched a new design of the platform at the end of 2019. The launch is a result of a period of researching the users’ needs and priorities and a following period of designing and developing.

“The new design is the first major redesign of the Veo universe that we’ve made. The former design has served us well, but it was time for something new“, says Kawus Nouri, Head of Product at Veo. 

User feedback is fundamental 
A pivotal element in the development of new designs and features in Veo is the feedback we get from the people who actually use the system. 

“Everytime we hear proposals and suggestions for new features or improvements, we listen carefully. After all, the users are the system’s primary stakeholders,” says Eva Krasna, Customer Success Manager at Veo.

Our customer support is the primary touchpoint between our users and us and besides supporting and helping them with getting the most out of their Veo camera, they also receive quite a lot of feedback and suggestions.

“We have a group of users that is extremely invested in the product and in the direction of the engineering behind. And the vast majority of the feedback we get from coaches in customer support is very useful and inspiring,” says Eva Krasna.

Developing the Veo experience is a never ending process that is kept alive by people who use the product and test all its thinkable (and sometimes unthinkable) possibilities. 

“We are constantly developing and building the Veo universe. User feedback is crucial in the way we work and almost every new feature and design decision is taken directly from or inspired heavily by users who spent time on communicating with us and thereby making their own product better,” says Kawus Nouri, Head of Product.

Improved experience on mobile
We encourage coaches to use video technology and data in their work with talent development, so of course we use data ourselves in our work. Much of the attention in the design project was centered around optimising and improving the experience on smartphones because of the data feedback from our users.

“Our analyses show that more than 65 % of the user sessions on the platform came from mobile devices last year and we expect that number to increase in the coming year. So for us, it was important to make a design that works flawlessly on phones’ small screens,” says Kawus Nouri.

And the optimisation is sought-after by the users.

“Some coaches who shared a lot of small clips with the users were annoyed that the players didn’t see it unless they were exported into for example Messenger or WhatsApp. We hope that with the new design and the new functions that it’ll be a better mobile experience and therefore more players will use it,” says Kawus Nouri.

From a wild maze to a walk in the park
In addition to a more mobile friendly design, we have also rearranged the recordings and created new team pages, so it’s much easier to find the right recordings. Besides giving a better experience for the coaches who use the platform, we hope to encourage more interaction between players and coaches inside the Veo system.

And apparently, the new design works. Since the launch at the end of December 2019, we’ve seen an increase of players-coaches interaction with the platform at approx. 50 %, in a period where a big portion of the clubs in Scandinavia have had their winter break.

The image of Megan Rapinoe fanning her arms at a standstill after putting in the first of her two goals against France in the semi final was arguably THE image of the Women’s World Cup last year. This ballerina, entertainer, comedienne, activist and footballer is now one of the most recognisable players in the world.

She has generated the deserved title of a Women’s Football icon debatably surpassing her compatriot Alex Morgan, the Brazilian magicienne Marta and the Japanese World cup winning warrior Homare Sawa. Rapinoe’s remarkability centers around her fantastic leadership on and off the pitch, her wand of a left foot and of course her public criticism of the Trump administration.

So who’s next? And perhaps more importantly – can England replicate and emulate these types of iconic stars that the USA have produced countless times over the last 10 years?

Going to the grassroots and encounter the elite
In December 2019, I set out to develop an understanding of the Women’s UK football market and gauge the level of excitement and buzz after this year’s World Cup. What I found was an elite pool of talent, a shared passion for improvement and the foundations for a perception overhaul. 

On a blustery Sunday afternoon, Actonians from the 5th tier of Women’s football took on Crawley Wasps, high flyers in the 4th tier in a 2nd round FA Cup tie, at the Middlesex County FA in Northolt. The 50+ Crowd were treated to a high octane encounter with both teams playing fearless attacking football, creating a tense, enjoyable spectacle. The lesser side, on paper, ended up winning the game 3-1 settled by a wonder strike from their tough tackling, all action, center midfielder. 

The joy, passion and excitement exuding from the Actonian fans after the game was palpable. Not only were they into the 3rd round and 1 step away from potentially drawing one of the big guns in the WSL but they were in line for a good cash injection for making it to the 3rd round proper. These exuberant celebrations were proof that football is absolutely everything to these teams and is absolutely everything to these fans, it was time to invest time and money into Women’s football, quickly. 

The National Football Youth League, run by potentially the most hard-working person in football I’ve ever met, Louise Macey, presented us (Veo) with the opportunity to sponsor their flagship U19’s women’s tournament at St. George’s Park.  It turned out to be 4 and a half hours of elite competition with Barking Abbey the eventual winners of a penalty shootout in the final. Absolute euphoria for the girls from the East End who celebrated as as though there life had depended on winning the shootout. The agony for the Gillingham Girls who had come within an inch of tournament glory was exemplified through plenty of tears and desolate expressions. 

Joining the revolution
It had taken just over a week to highlight that, when it comes to grassroots football, the Veo market strategy must be to spend equal time working on both Women’s and Men’s football globally. The passion and opportunity for women in football has never been greater and will only continue to rise. Major sponsors like BT and Barclays have begun to activate around various competitions and teams bringing a major commercial injection into the fastest growing sport in the UK. 

Thankfully, we are in the middle of a revolution that continues to gather momentum with The FA leading the charge. A revolution exemplified through Tournaments like the National Football Youth League being at St. George’s Park and the introduction of the FA Player, a free to view live streaming site to see all women’s games in the WSL. No doubt, there is still a long way to go before Premier League teams emulate Lewes FC’s move to provide their own men’s and women’s teams financial parity. 

However, there is no getting away from the fact that Women’s football will be a sporting powerhouse. Don’t get left behind!

January in the world of soccer means the United Soccer Coaches Convention! Thousands of soccer coaches from (primarily) North America attend the convention that is known as “the biggest soccer event in the world”. 

And tonight is the grand opening! We in Veo have sent a team all the way from Copenhagen. Let’s introduce the guys!

Remember, you can book a time slot in advance.

FC Veo

Veo brings a team with vast and diverse soccer experience to the United Soccer Coaches Convention. Even though we have a lot of different backgrounds, we all share the passion for soccer and sports.

Henrik Teisbæk, Co-founder and CEO
First man on the teamcard is Veo’s co-founder and CEO Henrik. Henrik has a long career in grassroots soccer in Denmark where he’s played a no-nonsense right back for all of his career. Henrik was so sad that he couldn’t rewatch his two career goals that he decided to found Veo in 2015.

See an interview with Henrik here.

Filip Domagala, Marketing Director
Our Marketing Director Filip’s soccer career as a goalkeeper in the Danish Sunday League might not go over in history. However, he brings experience from the business side of the soccer world where he has worked in the last 15 years.

Jerry Jarnald, Head of Partnerships
Jerry is organising Veo’s booth at the United Soccer Coaches Convention this year which naturally places him in the middle of the pitch. He’s the one pulling the strings and making sure the whole team works as a unit. He has been involved in soccer in Sweden for most of his life in clubs with exotic names like Djurgården and Vänersborg.

Kienn Jensen, Head of Sales
Kienn is a coach himself in Lyngby Boldklub’s youth academy which is one of Denmark’s most  well recognized academies. Kienn is a natural striker on the pitch and has experience from elite soccer in Denmark where he played in several clubs in the Danish first division.

Tim Haine, Sales Manager
For some reason, unknown to the rest of us, Tim’s biggest passion in life is the sport of Rugby. Maybe it’s his background in the UK. Maybe it’s the fact that his hometown team Bristol City F.C. haven’t played in the top tier league since Tim was born. However, he’s a solid man on Veo’s team and brings experience from soccer in Australia, Canada and Sweden.

Philip Payberg, Sales Manager
Philip is the newest signing to the Veo team who’s going to Baltimore. He has a background in elite soccer in Denmark. His tireless style on the pitch and in the office has brought him a place on the team.

Christian Jönsson, Sales Director
Christian is in charge of all sales in Veo. His own goalkeeping career brought him to the youth national team of Denmark, but that’s a few years ago now. We have retrained him into a creative playmaker who can always find a solution to the situation he’s in.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at Booth 1049!

This month, Cornwall FA entered into an official partnership with Danish tech company Veo Technologies, who’ve invented a camera that records football matches without a cameraman using artificial intelligence. Cornwall had been looking for ideas to advance football within the county using new technology, and this high-tech camera is an exciting fit.

Senior Football Development Officer Daniel Greenough is excited by this new partnership and says: “Cornwall FA are always looking for new and innovative ways to work and develop.  The new cameras and relationship can add to what we aim to achieve as a County FA whilst also providing an excellent opportunity for our football family.”

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The partnership between Cornwall FA and Veo Technologies has been in the making for a while and is now materialised by e.g. two AI cameras given to Cornwall FA, who will offer free usage to teams who achieve greatness in fair play, community projects, and fundraisers. Specifically, the cameras will be circulating “on the road” throughout the year to give players the chance to watch themselves play and coaches the chance to analyse and improve the players. 

Women and Girls and Disability Football Development Officer Vicky Fisher stressed how impressed she is with the new system and added: “We used the cameras for the first time to film our U12 and U14s ACC fixtures v Devon to allow the coaches to analyse the game and to help with individual player development. This will help us develop in so many ways.”

Ultimately, the goal for the partnership is for more local Cornwall players to hone their skills with the most high-tech hardware and software available on the market. And if that will help establish a professional team in the region in the coming years, or if more young talent will be scouted based on video material, only time will tell.