Fredericton company brings NFL prospects' off-field behaviour into view for 6 teams
A Fredericton-based startup has hit the big leagues with its social listening platform.
Avrij Analytics is working with six National Football League teams and one Major League Baseball team — and it's talking to several more — to help them scout players.
But not for their on-field play, said company CFO and co-founder Carmen McKell.
Avrij — pronounced like average — helps teams assess a player's off-field performance through their social media activity.
"This is a way to understand the full personality of a player and not just the performance on the field," said McKell.
In a time when personality and brand are so important in professional athletes, teams want to know that players will be a good fit.
They also want to be able to avoid a troublemaker whose personality and behaviour may have been foretold in social media, she explained.
For example, was the person out partying the night before a game? Or did they throw a fit after losing a game? Social media posts can be very enlightening about a player's character, said McKell.
But trolling through endless social media posts of prospective players would be impractical for a human, she said.
Avrij uses artificial intelligence to gather, collate and assess what a player has posted.
McKell said it would be impossible for a human to find and analyze that much data. It would involve going through all posts on all platforms — every tweet, every Facebook post, every platform.
"So it basically grabs all the data, filters it through and then pulls to the surface what would be the most important information that the teams are looking for to make decisions."
Finding future leaders
McKell said the company was launched in 2016 with the specific goal of developing a tool that could help teams assess the off-field character of a player.
"I think the off-field aspects of a player have always been important," she said.
She said teams have always looked for players they could build a franchise around; a leader that young people and other players could admire and try to emulate.
"These players have tremendous influence in society," said McKell. "What they tweet about, and what they put out on social media, has a huge influence on a great number of people who follow them on social media, as well as people who are influenced and see them as an inspiration for their lives."
Pressures of the game
McKell said teams can also use the information to monitor how well a player is adjusting to life in the big leagues.
Professional athletes who are thrust into the spotlight sometimes have difficulty dealing with the pressure, said McKell. And some highly paid athletes don't always make wise financial decisions, she said.
Monitoring their social media can help pick up early indicators, and teams can then reach out and offer help.
"Are they having high anxiety? Are they under a great deal of stress? Are they having issues with their marriage? These kinds of things might come out on their social media platforms. And so this way, the front office people from the team can get a heads-up and have an opportunity to intervene and continue and help develop this player."
McKell said the platform has become even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when team officials haven't been able to meet with potential recruits.
"And the new rookies that are coming in this year haven't even been able to interact at all with their other team members or any of the other staff in the league office. So this is the only way to understand and get to know them is through this channel."
Eyeing Division 1
McKell said Avrij is also looking to expand into Division 1 schools, like Clemson, Notre Dame, Penn State and Kentucky.
"They're also very interested in developing their players, because they know a lot of their players will go on and be drafted into the NFL," she said.
Avrij already has all NFL players in its database as well as some of the top college prospects.
