After working with Marvel, Pavel joined forces with Nivea and worked as a stereoscopy supervisor on set of one of their Nivea Man 360 commercials in Slovenia. Nivea was one of the main sponsors of clubs such as Real Madrid, AC Milan, Liverpool and PSG Paris so we wanted to utilize this connection and present our ideas.

Our first concept, similar to Spider-Jam, included people controlling a soccer ball launcher over social media against a real live goal keeper. While multiple players would comment with emojis represented in the goal, we would randomly choose a winner who would then get the chance to shoot one-on-one against the live goalkeeper. This would allow Nivea in combination with on of their clubs to give away products to the fans.

To test our idea, we had to run a couple of test events. For this, we built our own customized soccer ball launcher because the current machines on the market didn’t give us what we needed. 
Our main goal was to create a super automated stage, similar to a bowling alley. We didn’t want to manually feed the balls every time but rather have a cue of balls lined up behind the machine, waiting to be fed into the launcher and then shot one by one. Another tricky situation we quickly wanted to resolve was hiding all the mechanical parts inside the machine so the goalkeeper couldn’t see where the machine was going to shoot. 

Soon enough we started developing the second generation. This time, we not only included the cover for hiding the movements, we even added different levels of speed adjustments which allowed us to shoot up to 120km/h. We also improved the accuracy of the ball launcher. Since it was important for us to simulate reality as much as possible, we had to make sure the digital players could really show their skills by influencing the machine’s performance with a combination of accuracy and speed.
This made the game itself much more interesting and challenging. Suddenly you were able to miss the ball by not only aiming wrong but also shooting too slow or too strong. Just like kicking a real soccer ball. 

One of the major technical challenges with our second generation machine however, are the spinning motor engine parts, which are compressing the balls in order to gain momentum and speed.
The machine is compressing the balls too much and we currently have to keep buying new ones because they get destroyed so quickly. This is something we want to get resolved before our next live event. In addition, we still have to make sure its controls are connected with the mobile app and all the other backend features. Keeping everything in sync is definitely another challenge we’re trying to resolve. 

One of the biggest challenges in software development was figuring out a way how to let millions of players play live at the same time. Not only did we need to figure out, how to live stream video in under 0.2 seconds.
Multiple online devices needed to be able to communicate with each other in realtime as well. The technology called WebRTC is being used by others, however, nobody is currently trying to connect millions of people at the same time, letting them communicate simultaneously. 

Another big aspect was how could we let millions of people control one soccer ball machine? We created the skill game multiplayer mode which was basically a conference call for all the online players. 1 million devices needed to be able to communicate with each other in under 0.2 seconds, influencing each other at the same time. This feature became the core of the app, although the entire backend development proved to be very complex as well. From things like inputing data such as live events, the system calculating the points you lose/win while playing, all the way to the background communication between the system and the different physical parts on the live stage (such as lights, LED panel, etc).

Finding a place where we could actually host our events turned out to be another big challenge. We’ve have been looking for a suitable location for some time. Most of the buildings we visited were either too small, too big, too far away, too expensive or simply didn’t have a good enough internet connection. In October however, we finally started renting a space in Prague and that was only the first challenge. Since the location was not on the ground level, bringing the large goal and the 122 square meters of lawn onto the stage was exceptionally difficult. To soften the floor for goalkeepers we even added soft mats underneath the lawn as a base layer. 

In addition, our LED panel is an essential component of the game and one of the main elements of the stage. We learned from our previous projects, that people like to interact with the reality. This allows us to take their digital profile and connect it with the stage by displaying their comments and names behind the goalkeeper. The LED panel also helps us to create the atmosphere and look of a digital game, even though you are actually playing against a real goalkeeper. In the future we want to take this to the next level by bringing people to exotic locations and special football pits around the world. Imagine sitting in your living room in Berlin and displaying your name on a physical stage in Singapore, all while interacting with the people around it. 

This entire game and setup would not be possible without the team behind the stage. We’ve recreated an entire TV studio setup featuring live cameras and multiple monitors to ensure a smooth live stream. Everything is connected and the team behind the stage is managing without most people even noticing. 

Our core team was too small to development such a complex project, so Pavel started looking for partners and met with David Semerad, one of the founders of STRV, the biggest and most established software development company in Czech Republic. He loved the idea and connected us with the CEO Lubo Smid who quickly jumped on board. Next, we started talking to Vojtech Fric from Frame100r – a big film production company in Prague – who also liked the concept and decided to join forces. In August 2019 Live Penalty sro was born. Simultaneously, we had applied to various sport tech accelerator programs earlier that year, knowing that getting in touch with clubs and other sports brands was tough. In July, we got the message that out of 340 startups we were one of 7 accepted to the leAD accelerator program in Berlin. Founded by the grandson of Adi Dassler – the founder of Adidas – the program is a joint venture between SPORT1, the #1 platform for live sports in Germany, and leAD, the premier sports venture ecosystem, which boosts sports tech startups from seed to fully functioning profitable ventures.