🦥 #21 TrackBox: Bringing Pro-Level Football Analytics to Sunday League Football

Today

• ✋ Antwerpreneur: Christophe De Cort - Co-Founder of TrackBox

• 🧃 Giggle Juice: By Irregular Galaxy Doods

• 💎 Quiz Question: What’s the main attribute AI uses to identify players?

✋ Antwerpreneur: Christophe De Cort

Christophe wakes up at 6:45am.

Coffee machine on. A few exercises. Sometimes golf or football highlights in the background. Then a shower, and straight into work.

Sports has always been part of his life.

So maybe it's no surprise that his startup is all about bringing professional-level sports analytics to everyone who's ever kicked a ball on a Sunday morning.

The Question That Changed Everything

During COVID, Christophe and his co-founders picked up padel. They were hooked.

But after a few games, frustration set in.

"How is it possible that we don't know how many unforced errors I made? Who was the best at serving?"

They started researching. Padel was too small a market.

So they turned to their real passion: football.

At the professional level, players are tracked on everything. Distance covered, speed, passes, goals, even "expected goals." Fans can watch highlight reels of individual players minutes after a game ends.

At the amateur level? Nothing.

"Even though cameras had made their way onto amateur pitches, the data revolution hadn't. You could rewatch your full Sunday league match but no stats, no highlights, no insights."

That gap became TrackBox.

The €500-Per-Game Problem

In professional football, tracking data is gold.

Teams spend up to €500 per game and up to hundreds of thousands per year on systems that analyze every player's movement, speed, and tactical positioning.

Why so expensive? Because it's manual. Analysts watch footage and log every data point by hand.

"That's really only accessible for professional football," Christophe explains.

The opportunity was staring them in the face: automate the process, cut the costs, and suddenly the multi-billion euro amateur market opens up.

Three Friends, One Home Pitch

TrackBox is run by three co-founders with complementary skills.

Christophe (commercial), Wout Hardy (tech and business bridge), and Laurens Van Damme (tech).

They decided to test it themselves, and installed cameras at their home club. Taped match after match. Used the footage to train their AI.

The first version analyzed team stats: possession percentages, distance covered, corners, goals.

Interesting. But not game-changing.

Through early pilots, they realized what players and coaches really wanted was personal.

• How fast did I run?

• How many kilometers did I cover?

• Can I re-watch all my highlights in one reel?

That's when they realized that team analytics were not enough, and they should deliver individual player tracking.

From "cool" to "must-have."

The Hardest Problem in Sports AI

Tracking teams isn't hard.

Tracking individuals is a nightmare.

"The difficulty is when you and I play in the same team, in the same kit, but on a basic camera installation far from the pitch," Christophe says. "We bump into each other, or you just walk past me. For the camera, it's extremely hard to know who is who and separate us from each other."

The real challenge: once players collide or overlap, how does the AI know who is who?

The TrackBox software is built from scratch, using different identifiers to keep track of everyone.

And they chose football, the hardest sport to start with.

Twenty-two players. Massive outdoor pitches. Unpredictable weather. Sun, rain, and chaotic celebrations after goals.

The Business Model: Plug Into What Exists

TrackBox receives video footage from cameras already installed next to pitches.

They deliver AI analytics based on the video stream. No wearables needed.

This data is distributed by either sports camera providers or sports data providers to teams and players.

By working with existing sales channels, they avoid building distribution from scratch and scaling faster.

It's smart. Why build distribution if you can ride someone else's network?

Beyond Football

Football is the hardest sport. But not the last.

Once cracked, the tech can move into futsal, basketball, ice hockey, field hockey. Smaller teams, closer cameras, controlled conditions.

They're also experimenting with immersive VR through their sister company, Replay VR.

"You can put on your VR glasses and relive the exact same moment you lived on the pitch."

Imagine watching your goal from three angles. Or reliving a tactical decision in 3D.

That's the future they're building.

The Breakthrough Year

For two years, they'd been developing TrackBox, validating ideas, and "selling air" to partners.

Early pilots proved what players wanted. But without a finished product, closing deals was tough.

Then came the €600,000 raise.

The team grew to 10 people: AI engineers, data scientists, developers. New features boosted the software's performance, enabling highly accurate player tracking.

Now, TrackBox is in talks with some of the biggest sports camera and data providers. These companies want to enter lower-level amateur markets or automate their manual tagging setups, and they are running test cases on their real video footage to prove the software's value.

"In the coming months we will be able to show what we can do."

This is the year everything changes.

The Dream 

The ultimate vision goes beyond B2B partnerships.

"The goal from day one has always been breaking that barrier. When I arrive at my club and play a game, I can just re-watch my game highlights. I know how many kilometers I've run. I can see what I did wrong, what I can do better."

An app that gives every amateur player their own pro-level stats.

What Makes It Worth It

When asked what makes it worthwhile, Christophe's answer comes quickly.

"Working with people that I want to work with who believe in the mission and want to build something together."

Three Lessons for Sports Tech Founders

1. Start with the problem, not the technology: Validate real willingness to pay. Interest is cheap, paying is proof.

2. Build the cheapest possible prototype: Test before you invest. Every step should validate the next.

3. Leverage existing channels: Don't reinvent distribution when you can integrate into systems that already work.

TrackBox is betting on something simple: professional-grade sports analytics shouldn't only exist for the elite.

It's a multi-billion euro market. Growing fast. And this year is their proving ground.

Because sometimes the biggest opportunities are hiding in plain sight.

Professional sports analytics existed for decades before someone asked: why shouldn't weekend warriors get the same insights as world-class athletes?

And if TrackBox succeeds, your Sunday highlight reel might just look a little more like Ronaldo's or Messi's.

Christophe’s Recommendations

• People: Matthew McConaughey

• Podcasts: The diary of a CEO, 90 Minute Podcast, The Courageous Podcast with Ryan Berman.

• Book: Green Light by Matthew McConaughey

• Song listening on repeat: Sultans of Swings from Dire Straits. And he’s a big fan of Dermot Kennedy. 

• Favorite place in Antwerp: The Square at Museum of Modern Arts, Den Artist, and Ciros

Antwerpreneur-to-Antwerpreneur Q&A

Question: Scaling is a major challenge for many startups. Once you’ve figured out how to grow one part of the business, how do you keep that momentum going and continue scaling instead of stalling?

Chritophe’s answer: “The key is prioritizing and celebrating the small wins along the way. As a founder, you get hit from all sides and there’s always something demanding your attention. I’ve learned that even small wins deserve recognition. Whether it’s closing a grant, launching a new feature, or securing funding. For us, the next big milestone is making our solution fully automatic. That’s when things get real and when we have something tangible to sell and can start scaling.”

Where can you find Christophe?

You can find him on LinkedIn.

🧃 Giggle Juice

🤕 

💎 Quiz Question

Which of the following is the main attribute AI uses to identify individual players during a match?

A) Kit color and number

B) Player body shape

C) Running speed

D) Player’s dominant foot

_{You can find the answer at the end}