For Chad van Niekerk and Faseegh Tofey, standing behind a video camera is more than just their bread and butter, it is an opportunity to showcase grassroots sport talent to the world.
The brains behind SpyInc, broadcaster for the Bayview u-16 Youth Cup, the company was founded in 2021.
“The idea was to provide our local athletes a platform to help them take their respective sports to the next level. By providing the tools utilized in the professional side of sports, taking steps toward creating a platform to make professional tools more accessible to our people,” says Van Niekerk.
“The main purpose was to provide young up-and-coming athletes an opportunity to see themselves play, so they can finally critically analyze themselves. We identified this is not being done on a massive scale in our local sectors of sport.”
Grounded in the belief that there is a massive talent pool at grassroots sport levels, they have built a Youtube community of sport fans, eager to see their athletes perform.
“We believe that sport can reshape our world with a gift of inspiration. It has the strength to bring the passions of people together and make them a stronger unit. It communicates with the youth and educates the wise. Sport has the power to bring life to a field bearing dead grass by assisting organisations that work with the youth; we provide a platform for their many talents to blossom by using various streaming platforms such as YouTube and Facebook or private feeds,” says Van Niekerk.
Larger scale
Connecting with tournament director Mark Rodrigues last year, they decided to partner on a larger scale for the 11th annual tournament, broadcasting all daily games from the A field.
“Mark saw our passion and was happy to get us involved with such a prestigious tournament to help showcase the talent on show. This tournament has global interest and allowing it to be live allowed everyone to watch the tournament, which allowed even greater scouting opportunities and players to be given the chance to see what they did on match day,” says Van Niekerk. “We also feel it has great historical value, and by filming this event we ensure that these historical moments are captured.”
While they aim to bring more local sport to life, live from the pitch, funding remains an issue in the sector.
“We believe if we keep doing what we are doing, this will soon change. There is countless value that doing video and live streaming adds, such as marketing, referee quality control, coaches analysis, player analysis, historical achieves, assisting in player profile building, global exposure opportunities, and this just to name a few. The list goes on and on,” he says.
- For more, follow SpyInc on all social media platforms or visit www.spyinc.co.za
