Youth sports has a feedback problem. Families spend serious money on club soccer, and what their kid gets back after a match is a score and maybe a highlight clip. One coach can’t give individual feedback to a whole roster, so almost nobody does. PlayerPrint, a Utah-based startup founded this year, is building an AI-powered development system that gives every player the individualized feedback and guidance previously available primarily through elite academies.
The founding team knows both sides of this. CEO Michael Papworth spent more than 15 years building consumer products at Nike, Vivint and Previ. CTO Gabe Gunderson has built early backend systems at multiple successful startups across Silicon Slopes. Chief of Sport David Mayer holds UEFA A and USSF A coaching licenses and spent years as a player and an elite coach.
The market is large and the gap is well documented. There are 16.8 million outdoor soccer players in the United States and about 250 million worldwide. In PlayerPrint’s survey of 89 competitive and academy parents, 79% said they want clear guidance on what their child should focus on right now, and only 4% get specific feedback after most games.
Here’s how it works. A club films its matches the way most clubs already do, with Veo, Hudl, Trace or whatever camera it owns. PlayerPrint turns that film into an individualized development plan for each player: an objective evaluation of their performance, specific areas for improvement, personalized training recommendations, and video clips that provide context. Each match builds on the last, creating a longitudinal development record that follows the player across seasons, teams, and coaches. Rather than evaluating isolated performances, PlayerPrint helps players understand how they’re progressing over time.
Under the hood, PlayerPrint’s computer vision pipeline already handles player detection, tracking, pose and jersey reading. PlayerPrint’s computer vision pipeline already automates key stages of match analysis, but human involvement is still required to produce the final reviews. The company’s next milestone is dramatically reducing that manual work, enabling the platform to deliver individualized development at scale.
PlayerPrint reaches families through clubs. A partner club offers it to its families, families subscribe directly, and the club earns a share of the revenue. PlayerPrint launched paid subscriptions in May with Utah Athletic, converting approximately 35% of invited families across its initial pilot teams, with no subscriber churn to date.
PlayerPrint is starting with soccer, with a bigger vision: creating a lasting record of every young athlete’s development. Over time, that history could help connect players with the recruiting and scouting opportunities that fit their potential.
To see how PlayerPrint brings elite-level feedback to young athletes and partner clubs, visit playerprint.com.
⚽️ Big disclaimer: Gabe, one of the founders, is my brother, so I’m highly biased, and I think they’re rad!