Gary Boddington: Lessons From an Olympian (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder
I'm delighted to introduce our most accomplished guest of the show yet, originally from South Africa, is a former field hockey player who competed in the 1996 Summer Olympics. This man has over 25 years of experience working in sports and technology and multiple athletes, founders, investors, and organizations. Today, he's the CEO and co-founder of Sports Technology Group, a company looking to disrupt the industry, using innovative and groundbreaking technologies. It is an honor to host such an icon of the industry in the Halftime Snacks. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Gary Boddington!
Gary Boddington
Thank you. That's an awesome introduction. I would never classify myself as an icon of the industry. But I'll go with that. Thank you.
Ronen Ainbinder
It's great that you took my invitation to the show, Gary; thank you so much. I'm super excited to learn from you, and I'm sure the listeners are as well. I'd love to start our chat today by learning about your story as an Olympian. Given that not every day of the week, I get to meet Olympians. I'm super curious to ask you about it. What I want to ask you, what are one or two things you do in your training that helped you win today in business and life?
Gary Boddington
The best way to describe it is to use cliches because I don't think any sportsperson is different, regardless of the sports code or geography. I've benefited enormously from my sports career. Transferring the skills that I learned there into my business career has obviously not been decades longer than my original sports career. But I think and go back to those cliches, it's just things like you have to stay focused on your goals, stay disciplined, work hard, and have the resilience to bounce back. Those elements around becoming a competitive athlete at an international level are exactly the same and completely transferable to the business world. So in the business world, and whether individual sport or team sport, you can look at the principles of being successful in sport is analogous to the principles of being successful in business. In a business environment, you've got to have a very clear goal for your team. You got to get the team aligned behind that clear goal. You got to have clear communication so that everybody is an aligned and open channel so that everybody has the opportunity to contribute. And then once everybody's aligned and clear up; Have you got the right people in the team? Can everybody stay focused? And then once you've got all those elements to get them in it, just be disciplined, stay focused, get the hard work done. So I don't think I'm unique in making some of these comments. I listened to many other sportspeople and listened to many podcasts and a lot of entrepreneurial podcasts. And it's kind of the same thing. So I apologize if that sounds a bit cliche. Still, I think that's the reality of trying to compete on an international level within sports or business.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's, that's great, Gary, and what was the last piece of advice? Your coach said to you before you competed? What is it that you remember, Gary Boddington You obviously have a different interaction with coaches as you develop through your career. As a younger guy growing up developing different aspects of your game with the technical skills or technical understanding of games, different things change. Still, I think you mature into the game physically. Your technical skills are good, and you understand the strategy and tactics behind the game. Ultimately, I think, some of the best advice I would get from those coaches at that level was what just "trust yourself, back yourself." Again, that crosses over to business as well. When you're competing at an international level, and you've kind of you've developed over several years. You've developed all the elements or elements of your game and all the physical attributes you need to develop. You are ultimately competing against people who've done the same thing and have also put in the hard yards. So at the end of the day, you just got to trust yourself and execute as best as you possibly can.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's fascinating. Gary, thank you for sharing. Considering that one of the things that have changed significantly between 1996 and today is the exponential evolution of technology. I wonder how has that taken into effect in performance in preparation of athletes? Today, as an example, in one of the articles I wrote in my digital magazine, we explored sports apparel design science. It has been proven that those improvements help athletes be better, faster, and stronger. Studying the different physics of the movements and creating better designs to beat the forces that work against the body. Given your experience, I'm very curious to ask you how athletes' performance and preparation are different now than before? Gary Boddington To be fair, I think he's probably there's no comparison compared to where he was before. When I was growing up as a young boy, there used to be seasons allocated to specific sports back in South Africa. In South Africa, there's a very warm climate, and it's very conducive to sport. So everybody plays a lot of sports. So in the winter months, I would play hockey and ice hockey; ironically, I actually competed for South Africa and ice hockey at an international level. But I would play rugby, I would play soccer or football, and those will all kind of consider winter sports. And then in some hours, play cricket and water polo and tennis or go surfing. So back in those days, you could do all of those. And that's the one element that has changed. It's not the case anymore, because those it's not every sport has is 12 months of the year. Now, there's no, you're six months of this, and six months of that. So that's one low-level way, I think it's changed enormously. It's almost gone full circle. Many people say it's maybe not a good idea for a younger athlete to focus and specialize in one sport. You have the cross-train benefits if you want to compete in one sport. You can learn a lot from other sports if you're doing cross-training. But I think you're 100% correct. I was arguably the last generation, maybe second to last. We would still have a beer in a room and make friends with guys after an international or provincial level. And that there is a lot of that's all changed all sports, it's much more professional. Driven by the introduction of sports medicine, sports science, and the explosion of wearables and track data. And I think that's only just begun as well. I think the tracking of data is brilliant at the moment; some great vendors out there produce unbelievable data. The challenge is to aggregate that data and analyze that data and create better outcomes for athletes, to the point where we have discussions about being able to benchmark yourself. If you're a young athlete, you should be able to benchmark yourself against some of the top athletes at the moment to say, am I heading in the right direction? Is my bicep the right size? is my tricep the right size? is my explosive speed the right measure metric? And if I'm not heading that way, I can do the right interventions to get me on the right track. Or if I'm not going the right way, just to acknowledge that I'm actually never going to be a pro athlete. You know, that's, that's potentially a reality that could happen as well. I think the nice thing about high-performance athletes is that you can measure many data, which crosses over to people who aren't high-performance athletes. So there's a lot of healthy, active lifestyle-driven by many activities that athletes are doing. And a lot of that can be data-driven right down to how do you determine the ultimate football player, the ultimate hockey player, the ultimate tennis player? They are genomic seminars, you know this, there's a lot of detail out there that you can start to track now. Start working out how you create your best athletes or coach an athlete to become the best as they can be. So yeah, to answer your question more directly, I don't believe that compares how we used to train. But clearly, it's sports are very different nowadays, and it's much better off for it.
Ronen Ainbinder
Totally, totally. Gary, I'll keep that in mind. That's super interesting. Considering your wide experience and knowledge of sports and technology, combining it with the work and the tech trends you're exposed to consistently. I'm very intrigued to ask you if I would give you 10 million dollars to invest only in sports technology today. How would you use it, and why? Gary Boddington Brilliant, just when you're ready, write that check. Just send it my way. I'm ready for it. The first thing I would do is start a fund or take a $10 million fund and put that as the first money in. And I would go to the market and see if I can leverage that initial check. So with I can go five x or 10, next time raise a fund or 50 million or 100 million. So that would be my first step. The second step would then really start to look at, to look at investing in startup technology. And that space is just exploding. I mean, I spent probably seven years in the blockchain space; I was very early in that space. And things were going mad then. I just see the number of people that are coming to the sports sector now is growing fast. And the number of ideas and new startups is growing fast. Many sportspeople don't understand technology, or there's a lot of technology, people who don't understand sports. That's a sweeping generalization because there are obviously a lot of people in the middle. The sports sector's big opportunity is to create more people who understand both sides to create the stimulus with investment to allow startups to give ideas, some flat. They're not all going to make it like every other sector. But there's just some unbelievable ideas and that. And that's really it. I mean, why would I do that is around. I just think we're at a juncture in history, which is incredibly exciting. If you look at the sports sectors, there's blockchain technology with smart contracts if you think of all the modern technology out now. There's crypto tech, there's a cryptocurrency, and there's, and the associated wallets, and there are AI and ml, and is IoT, and AR and VR and pick an acronym. And they are all coming to sports, if they're not in sport, while they're all in sports, but they're just not kind of haven't been embraced yet. And then if you apply, if you overlay that into the challenge in sports around fan engagement and stadium optimization, and wearables, we talking about him. It's just it's such an exciting time, I said to my son, often, he's a second-year university student. And so I wish I was 30 years younger and back where he was because it's just such an exciting time. And suppose you look ahead to LA 2028. If you cast your mind forward, we'll probably don't actually have to be sitting in the stadium. You can sit next to the stands using an AR or VR solution. But that's the technology that's going to be around for the Olympic Games in 2028. And person 24, for that matter, is just going to be staggering. And that excites me. So I yeah, I'd certainly I'm happy to accept your check. And I would want to invest in helping startups to get going with the ideas. And I'd also put an element of education, I'd like to invest in the education layer, really to help the sector move forward. Because it's not a technology challenge, it's a human challenge, the inability, or the lack of education, and an unwillingness to embrace digital transformation. And that needs to be addressed. And that's an education thing, nothing else. It's not a technology challenge.
Ronen Ainbinder
Since you're an expert, I would definitely invest those $10 million, if I would have maybe in the future, Gary. I also think that what's interesting is how pandemic has accelerated this adoption of the technology insights for us. And I think we're gonna see a lot of new innovative technologies very, very soon. I mean, that's even before we get back into the savings. So that's going to be worth looking into Gary, I appreciate your answer. And also, given that you've worked with so many founders and companies, I want to know the number one reason for failure in the sports tech ecosystem is? Gary Boddington You're quite right. I mean, what you just alluded to is what's happening, this COVID thing I mean, as nasty as it is, and as terrific as it has been on humanity. A crazy spin-off for all sectors, not just the sports sector, is that there's been an acceleration of digital transformation. There's been an acceptance that digital technology can actually work. So they are one of the biggest frustrations for me. I'm trying to convince my generation that is actually, in my view, stifling innovation. They're not willing to accept that there are better ways that our generation has been doing things in certain ways for so many years ago. It's ingrained. So when a new idea comes along, it's you know, it's the old change management thing. There's nothing different from everything every other sector; there are change management and a willingness to be open-minded to accept change. And what I often say is, you know, if you're sitting at a boardroom. Your people around your table are not changing, or your agenda items are not changing. There's no discussion around technology, or there's no budget allocation to technology. You're going to have issues, you're going to get left behind. I don't think it's a failure of The sports ecosystem is just it's an evolutionary process. If there is a startup that fails, it's Blakley, because they haven't been able to get the funding they needed to keep going. They haven't convinced traditional sports organizations to look at adopting a digital a better solution. Again, I think it's more about the lack of education or the ignorance around what's available or what's possible, you know. Suppose this is just an inability to embrace digital transformation. In that case, that's a big contributing factor to the lack of, I wouldn't say the FOIA but to the lack of more rapid acceleration in the sector's evolution. It's entirely a human challenge, not a technology challenge, as we all know, and I'm certainly not going to claim to be a smart technology guy. But I know that the guys who can write smart code can do just unbelievable things with technology nowadays. It is useless unless there's a use case that has been addressed or pain point that's been addressed. And you've got an executive or C level leadership person saying, we are going to change the old way we've done things, and we're going to bring in new ways of doing things.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, Gary, I totally agree with you. And I think that the new generation, my generation, are bringing, I feel like this, this intersection between sports and technology in a more creative way. That will try to replace the things in sports that either is broken or should be fixed. As we've seen, for example, in soccer, you have VAR. And they're already talking about drones, which be referees for the games. So I feel like the youth are the ones bringing the change. As soon as the youth grows and matures, that's when we're going to see the change. Gary Boddington If I can tip in there, I think eSports is a good example of driving the change's demographic. So if you look at eSports, athletes who are the high-end athletes and athletes are the home athletes. All of them will buy, they'll buy a skin for the gun, whatever the game is, let's just call it skin for the gun, using Bitcoin on the lightning network. So if you bought from him, you think what they've done is they bought a virtual asset, with virtual currency on a virtual network. That's reality, you will not reverse that, that's unstoppable. It's irreversible. So that demographic is used to that type of experience. And the dichotomy at the moment or the challenge at the moment for the traditional thinking generation is okay, well, those, that person has just gone ahead and done the transaction digitally. But now I want them to open a bank account, I'm going to ask them to come into my branch and come and sit down and put in a seat and sign a piece of paper. Or I'm going to try and sell them an insurance policy. And I want them to come and see me in my office, and it's just not going to happen. Everything is digitally driven. And I just that was said to me to it's a generational change that's going on. And I completely agree with you. What's happening is, if you look at sports organizations worldwide, even the esports organizations, now a lot of them are common ownership. The billionaires own both traditional and eSports organizations. Now the bigger ones anyway. But very few are the younger generation coming through, but they're not at that level of decision-makers. They may be starting to influence the boardroom. But they're not actually the final decision-makers. It'll be interesting if we could listen again, in five or 10 years, because we'll laugh; I think we'll laugh at some of the things we've spoken about because it'll just be normal. You know, all of this technology will be blockchain won't be some weird and crazy idea. Cryptocurrency won't be a weird idea. It'll be Normality. That's how it's gonna, it's gonna roll in 10 years.
Ronen Ainbinder
For sure, Gary, and I'm sure that you know, in 10 years, someone's gonna listen to this podcast, and he's gonna say Gary and Ronen predicted it, they knew it. We should partner up with them.
Gary Boddington
Well, yeah, that's when we get the 10 million check, is it?
Ronen Ainbinder
That's right. That's exactly right! I want to ask you, I'm very curious to know, what's your take on entrepreneurship? What are three or four elements that you look for in sports tech entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs? In general, are good signs that will be successful in their time?
Gary Boddington
So, you know, it's interesting that because it almost circles back to right where we started. As I said, as a sportsperson, there are certain basic things you have to get right. Suppose you want to compete at whatever level. In that case, it doesn't matter whether you at a school level at a provincial level at a national or international level. You have to be very clear about your goal is, you have to be very clear, but stay very focused on achieving your goal and what you need to do to achieve your goal. And then you have to work hard and stay disciplined about doing those things. And, and as I said earlier, trust yourself, I'm going to do that at the moment, where, you know, we build in a platform. I go in and talk to a lot of people. People don't understand the capabilities or the possibilities of a digital platform. And, and, you know, 25 years on have been an entrepreneur, I still second-guessed myself, because people say, people that know sports really well. They've been doing sports only for 25 years, I said, No, it's not going to work. And I have to keep telling myself or backing myself that I know that that's not a case of that my idea won't work, it's just a case of it will work. Still, we need an education piece; we have to get over, not just work straight away from the gate, but some elements can be addressed. And, and I think that's no different from playing sports, you know, you want to get to a certain level. You're not selected for a team, or you get an injury, and you have a setback, and you just have to have that resilience and get up and go again, and nothing changes. That's not common for any entrepreneur, not a technology entrepreneur. You can be a retail entrepreneur, whatever. I think it's just you have to demonstrate those characteristics of, yeah, understand where you're going. Instead, how you're going to get there, stay focused, be resilient, and back yourself, just keep going. If I were presented two resumes of two people with very similar skill sets, academic backgrounds, and experience for a particular role. If one has been a sports person at any level, and the other hasn't, my own default is to choose a sportsperson. Because if you pick a swimmer that's competed at any level, that swimmer knows that they've got to dive in the pool when it's cold at six o'clock in the morning, and I got to do those links. And that's the hard work and discipline. And most people have developed those kinds of characteristics of resilience and dedication. So I think entrepreneurs are the same, whatever sector we're in. It's just a, it's a slightly different breed.
Ronen Ainbinder
A great thing about sports– that maybe it's underrated– is its capacity to mirror life, and other disciplines across life, like business or entrepreneurship or innovation. They're not even talked about, you know, it's great to see how there is resilience, as you mentioned in sports. The mentality and focus that you develop thanks to the sport are then transferred to multiple disciplines. And you know, I'd love that. And Gary, I think that was so much wisdom and so much to take in and so much to think about, I think that's a great place to wrap today's conversation. I want to really thank you for joining the call to be on the show. I mean, your insights and your analyses are one of a kind and your personality as well. I found it super interesting and fascinating. I hope we get the chance to grab some snacks again in the future, but for now, thank you for coming to the Halftime Snacks!
Gary Boddington
Thank you. It was fun. Anytime!
Transcribed by Otter.