By Emma Brannam for Newshub Connect
Four sports-mad friends are making a play for the big time by turning everyone from couch potatoes to celebrities into commentators.
Spalk - that's sports plus talk - lets fans synchronise their commentary to a video livestream and then share it.
"When we kicked off, it was just a bunch of guys sitting on a couch, watching TV and calling the players," says Spalk founder Ben Reynolds.
They posted their audio online during the Cricket world cup to great success.
"Then we thought, 'How can we be a bit smarter about this? How can we build a business around this?'," adds co-founder Sam Viskovich.
It's been a sleepless few months for the former schoolmates, who along with university friend Michael Prendergast, quit their jobs to form Spalk and develop the software.
"I was already living at home, Sam moved back in with his mum and dad," says Mr Reynolds. "Now we all earn a salary but it’s kind of petrol and noodles."
"We're not about to buy houses any time soon," agrees Mr Viskovich.
While they might not be living the high life just yet, they have just hired their first employee, Cameron Ekblad.
So how does Spalk work? Would-be commentators just need sign up for an account, and have a computer with a good internet connection. It's useful, but not essential, to have a fancy microphone too.
Your commentary can be done from anywhere in the world and in any language, as long as the broadcasters have sent the livestream link to Spalk.There has been plenty of overseas interest in Spalk and to help the firm develop, the team is working with Vodafone xone, the global business accelerator.
"We work with streaming and live information and live data and it's pretty critical everything works," says Mr Reynolds.
The team are also keen to capitalise on the telecommunication giant’s long history of supporting NZ sports teams and fans.
As for the future? "We've done a lot of stuff with second-tier rights holders, the national bodies you’d call them. The water polos, the volleyballs, Auckland Cricket. The next step is the broadcasters," says Mr Viskovich.
They're not revealing any names just yet, but Spalk will be integrating with a couple of broadcasters later this year.
"We built the software, we got into market with some smaller rights holders, we're now at this really cool point where we're putting the foot on the gas and through the stuff we're doing with Vodafone as well as with other networks overseas we're really growing," says Mr Reynolds.
The long-term goal? Mr Viskovich has it sussed: "To be the source of all the world's commentary".
Want to be a sports pundit? The legendary Brendan Telfer has some top tips
And you can follow Spalk's progress with Vodafone xone.
This story was created by Newshub Connect for Vodafone.
