Startup Scorability wants to revolutionize college sports recruiting as NIL takes off

Startup Scorability wants to revolutionize college sports recruiting as NIL takes off


Coaches and staff use the Scorability recruiting dashboard to discover, evaluate, and engage with recruits

Scoreability

Sports tech platform Scorability has raised $40 million in fresh funding as the company looks to modernize college sports recruiting, the company announced on Tuesday.

The funding round was led by Bluestone Equity Partners, with participation from sports merchandising giant Fanatics. Luther King Capital Management also joined the round, alongside returning investors Silverton Partners, Next Coast Ventures and Scorability’s co-founder Brian Cruver.

The raise comes as the college sports landscape undergoes a seismic shift following a $2.28 billion NCAA antitrust settlement that paved the way for student-athletes to be compensated for their contributions.

The startup has raised $51 million to date.

Cruver started Scorability in 2023 with the goal of fixing the college sports recruiting process after experiencing what he calls “a broken system” with the recruitment of his son, now a quarterback at Florida Atlantic University.

“Think of it as LinkedIn Premium for the sports recruiting world,” Cruver told CNBC. “We’re just trying to make the process easier, because as a parent, we went through a lot pain with shady products and services preying on the hopes and dreams of high school athletes.”

Cruver isn’t just a football dad, he’s also the founder of two billon-dollar businesses: emergency communications provider AlertMedia and hospital disinfection technology company Xenex Healthcare.

Scorability’s app is used at camps to capture visual evidence of verified measurables like height and wingspan.

The Austin, Texas-based entrepreneur’s Scorability platform now boasts 1.2 million athletes and 3,000 college sports program users. It allows college coaches to view everything from school transcripts, stats and highlights of recruits all in one place.

Campuses including the University of Miami, Texas Christian University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of Pennsylvania have all signed on to use the platform.

“Scorability is attractive to Penn because they do all the legwork for us, collecting all the measurables, insights, coach evals—they serve up everything we need to find the right kids,” Bob Benson, associate head coach and defensive coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a testimonial posted on Scorability’s website.

Get the CNBC Sport newsletter directly to your inbox

The CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media, delivered weekly to your inbox.

Subscribe here to get access today.

Scorability provides data, discovery and AI-driven evaluation tools to college coaches combing through thousands of hopefuls from their computer. Many coaches travel all over the country seeking out their future players.

“With the way our calendar is, we don’t have a lot of time to make these decisions,” Shannon Dawson, offensive coordinator for the University of Miami, said in another testimonial. “You don’t have 6 months, 10 months to get to know a kid, sit down with their family, do home visits. Those days are over.”

In the 2024-25 academic year, the NCAA reported a record of more than 550,000 student-athletes competing across nearly 20,000 teams. With more players than ever entering the transfer portal, the opportunity to use the platform has never been greater, according to Cruver.

Scorability is free to use for parents and athletes. College athletic programs pay between $10,000 and $40,000 annually depending on their type of access.

“This is a problem solver on both ends of the market for something that’s increasingly economically important,” said Bobby Sharma, Bluestone Equity Partners founder. “This is a huge, multi-billion opportunity.”



Source

Amazon debuts Masters coverage, becoming the tournament’s fourth-ever media partner
Business

Amazon debuts Masters coverage, becoming the tournament’s fourth-ever media partner

Key Points Amazon Prime Video will have two hours of exclusive Masters coverage, from 1 p.m. ET to 3 p.m. ET, on Thursday and Friday. Amazon will not have any tie-ins with its ecommerce business during the broadcast. Rather, it will adhere by the Masters’ strict broadcasting rules. Amazon is only the fourth media partner […]

Read More
Kia plans to launch U.S. pickup truck by 2030
Business

Kia plans to launch U.S. pickup truck by 2030

Kia plans to release a pickup truck for American consumers in the coming years, as the South Korean automaker plots continued growth domestically and globally. The company said Thursday it will add a pickup truck that includes hybrid variants by 2030 as a major expansion of its brand into the highly lucrative U.S. market. At […]

Read More
Disney plans layoffs of as many as 1,000 employees
Business

Disney plans layoffs of as many as 1,000 employees

People gather at the Magic Kingdom theme park before the “Festival of Fantasy” parade at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, U.S. July 30, 2022. Octavio Jones | Reuters Disney is planning to begin its next phase of cost cutting, which will include as many as 1,000 layoffs, according to a person familiar with the […]

Read More