For Investors & Technical Co-Founders
How Fieldhouse
Actually Works
Sports rights are fragmented across 10+ platforms. No one owns putting the right game on the right screen with the right sound. Fieldhouse is the management and orchestration layer on top.
The right game. On the right screen. Automatically.
The Fragmentation Problem
A single week of sports is scattered across all of these — each with its own app, login, and commercial license. Amazon for Thursday night, Peacock for Sunday night, Netflix for Christmas Day, Apple TV for MLS. No one tells a bar (or a fan) where the game actually is. Fieldhouse does.
Section 01 — Hardware Integration
No New Hardware Required
Fieldhouse is an API integration and orchestration layer that sits on top of the AV gear bars already own. It integrates with whatever system a bar already runs — IR/IP, serial, proprietary AV controllers, smart TVs — and tells each screen what to show. No rip-and-replace. No new hardware required.
Live Schedule Feed
ESPN today · SportsRadar planned
Cross-platform sports schedule — every game, every network, every start time. Updated in real time.
Subscription Intelligence
Per-bar licensing
Which platforms is this bar licensed for? What can it legally show — and on how many screens?
Scheduling Algorithm
Bar identity + momentum
Combine bar preferences, customer demand, real-time game momentum and crowd energy to rank assignments.
AV Control API
Your existing system
Execute the screen change on whatever AV the bar already runs — URC, Crestron, Global Caché and more. No human touches a remote once a device is paired at the bar.
Sound Switching
Automated + instant
Commercial detected → switch audio to music. Play resumes → switch back. The #1 pain point — gone.
The hard part
Each of these systems exists independently. The orchestration layer that makes them all talk to each other cleanly is the defensible moat — and the thing no existing product has attempted.
Section 02 — The Data Layer
The Brains Behind the Bar
Four data layers power the orchestration engine. Each one compounds on the last.
ESPN today · SportsRadar planned
Live Schedule Feed
Every game across every platform, updated in real time. Who's playing, what network, tip-off time, current score. Runs today on ESPN's public feed — the heartbeat of the demo; production moves to a licensed SportsRadar feed for reliability and coverage depth.
Per-Bar Licensing
Subscription Intelligence
Each bar has a different contract mix — DirecTV Business, streaming add-ons, league packages. Fieldhouse knows what each bar can legally show and surfaces the gaps ("you can't show this playoff game and here's what it would cost to fix that").
Bar Identity + Momentum
Assignment Algorithm
Bars have personalities. A Bills bar shouldn't auto-assign the Cowboys game. The algorithm weighs bar identity, patron demand signals, live game momentum, and crowd energy to pick the optimal assignment.
The #1 Operator Pain Point
Automated Sound Switching
Surfaced in every customer discovery call: operators hate switching audio manually during commercials. The demo shows the full loop — sound-on TV flips to house music during the break and back the moment play resumes. Today that's a timed simulation; production swaps in real break detection (audio fingerprinting or a broadcast ad marker). It's the feature that converts skeptics once it's live.
The Data Flywheel
Out-of-Home Viewership — The Unmeasured Billion
Out-of-home sports viewership is currently almost entirely unmeasured. Fieldhouse, operating at scale across hundreds of bars, generates the first reliable signal: what games people actually watch in bars, by neighborhood, by night, by sport. That data is a standalone product for leagues, streamers, and advertisers — and it only exists because we built the operator layer first.
Consumer app is location-aware and pulls live bar data from the bar-side tool, closing the loop between fan intent and operator action.
Section 03 — Build Phases
The Roadmap
We're building to be live for the 2026 football season — the most active sports-bar period of the year. Every phase is designed to close the next raise.
Now
Foundation
Validation conversations complete. Clickable prototype built. Founding documents done. Market confirmed: operators hate the current workflow and fans can't find their game.
Months 1–3
Working Demo + Pre-Seed
Working demo in hand. 5 NYC bars committed as pilots. Pre-seed raise of $250K–$500K to fund the first engineering sprint and SportsRadar licensing.
Months 3–9
Live in New York City
Bar tool and consumer app live in NYC. Licensed SportsRadar feed integrated. 50–100 bars on the platform. First revenue from bar subscriptions and reservation flow.
Months 9–18
Seed + Second City
Seed raise of $1M–$3M. Expand to a second market. Data layer starts generating signal worth packaging for partners.
Months 18–30
Series A + National Expansion
Series A of $8M–$20M. National rollout. Data product launched for leagues and streamers. The orchestration layer is the moat — no one else has it.
Hard Timing Target: Football Kickoff 2026
College Football kickoff (late August) and NFL opening week (September) are the most important sports-bar moments of the year — and college is the harder problem: more games, more networks, more niche fanbases to satisfy. Being live for that stretch, even in one city, is the proof of concept that matters.
Section 04 — Feature Prioritization
What Ships First
The MVP proves the loop: bar gets found, fan shows up, game is on with sound. Everything after that is building the moat.
- 1Consumer map of NYC bars with real-time "what's on / sound on" status
- 2Concierge-style bar profiles — form submission → public neighborhood page
- 3Manual / assisted bar dashboard for game assignment
- 4TV reservation + table reservation requests
- 5Cross-platform sports schedule view (what's on, where to watch)
Goal: prove the loop works — bar gets found, fan shows up, game is on with sound.
- 1Live SportsRadar feed — automated cross-platform schedule intelligence
- 2Automatic URC / Crestron screen control API integration
- 3Fully automated commercial sound-switching (detect ad → music → resume)
- 4Scheduling algorithm with live game-momentum scoring
- 5Subscription & coverage audit ("what you can't show and what it'd cost")
- 6Dead-hour intelligence — fill quiet periods with high-engagement content
- 7Real geolocation / map layer with live bar status pins
- 8Out-of-home viewership data product for leagues, streamers & advertisers
- 9National and global expansion playbook
Goal: the orchestration moat — automated, self-improving, with a data layer no one else has.
Want to Build This?
We're looking for a technical co-founder who loves sports, hates bad UX, and wants to build the infrastructure layer for a fragmented $100B+ market.