He is the owner of Elevate Analysis, a small Dunedin company tucked out of sight on Princes St.
The company films games, crunches the numbers and provides analysis.
If you follow Dunedin division 1 club rugby and have a social media account, chances are you are familiar with Staples’ work.
He posts regular updates.
They range from team of the week to detailed breakdowns of a team’s set-piece success rate.
It is a labour of love, really.
Staples co-founded the company in 2017 and has been the sole owner since Covid.
He was working at the Otago Polytechnic institute of sport and saw a gap in the market.
‘‘There was a clear divide between what the clubs and schools were getting versus what the professional teams were getting,’’ he said.
‘‘So while I was working at the polytech, they allowed us to work out of there, basically, which was useful. And we were able to utilise our relationships and sort of build around what we were able to do there.’’
Their major clients are the Otago Rugby Football Union and the city’s rugby clubs.
The Otago Spirit use the service and the company also provides analysis for Otago age group and development teams.
The NPC side uses a different provider.
‘‘It’s sort of an end-to-end service where we provide the video, we film, and provide that data.
‘‘And then we provide analysis that we do on the footage.
‘‘We have a couple of distribution channels. We have a video portal where teams can have an account and they can access all the footage, opposition footage and do their own video work.
‘‘We also have an online app where the teams can access the game data, essentially.’’
As you can imagine, it is a very handy tool for coaches looking for an edge or clueless sports writers looking for an angle — guilty, so very, very guilty.
Rugby is the biggest user, but the company has also worked in hockey, basketball and football.
The rise of AI cameras has made it a more competitive space.
‘‘It’s a bit of a frustration, but that’s just what happens. And unfortunately, [some codes] value just getting footage over the analysis component.
‘‘So they miss out on a big chunk of what we can provide.’’
There is not a lot of money in the business, yet. The company aims to break even each year.
But Staples is ambitious to expand outside of Dunedin and ‘‘grow into other regions and provide meaningful data to those competitions’’.
Turning a profit would be nice as well.
Elevate Analysis has increased its presence on social media this year to help grow and make further use of the data it generates.
‘‘We collect a lot of data on these games and, as much as we provide much of it to the teams themselves, I thought it’d be quite an interesting way to create some interest in the competition as well as maybe make ourselves more known because we’re just operating in the background.’’
