The next wave: Putting armchair viewers into ringside seats

By KARYN SCHERER

From the top floor of one of Newmarket's taller buildings, Craig Meek has a fine view over some prime Auckland real estate.

But you would not want to bother gazing outside too often - the interior of his brand new office is much more interesting.

Strategically placed around the walls are an array of state-of-the-art plasma screens, blasting out 24-hour-a-day coverage of the world's most exciting sporting events.

The founder of technology company Virtual Spectator encourages his staff to be distracted.

After all, it is their job to develop software that gives viewers the ultimate ringside seat to an array of sports; so, he reasons, it helps if they understand the sports involved.

And if watching sport all day gets tiresome, there is always the in-house cafe where they can top up their caffeine levels.

It's all very dotcommish and seems a bit flash for a company that's in its infancy. But 36-year-old Meek is unapologetic.

When some of the world's biggest companies come knocking at his door, he can hardly expect them to sit on a wooden crate in the back of a garage, he jokes.

"Besides, these guys sometimes have to work 12, 14 or 16 hours a day. If they've got to do that, it's up to me to make it more comfortable for them."

An art-school dropout, Meek blames his hectic lifestyle on being in the wrong place at the right time.

After joining the wrong queue at the dole office, he decided he would rather set up his own company than join another queue.

The result was Design City Arizona. Another Wellington-based company called Megabyte followed before he moved to Auckland and set up Terabyte several years later.

The move proved to be one of the low points of his career. Juggling the complexities of ending one company and starting up a new one nearly drove him into bankruptcy.

"You've got to know what you're doing and you've really got to have a passion for what you do because you're taking big risks," he says. .

"You've also got to believe in yourself and what you're doing, because it's not for the faint-hearted."

Terabyte's big break was its involvement in the Whitbread round-the-world yacht race in 1993.

Through its relationship with newspaper publisher INL, it was trying to speed up the way pictures got delivered to newspapers, and it ended up managing the technology for the media centre.

The event gave Meek some invaluable international contacts.

But it was another yachting event, the Louis Vuitton Cup in San Diego, that was the turning point. Terabyte was up against Nasa for the contract to manage the technology for the San Diego media centre, and Louis Vuitton was so impressed by its pitch that it did not even bother hearing what Nasa had to say.

Louis Vuitton has since stuck by the Kiwi company, despite a heart-stopping moment at the beginning of last year's America's Cup challenger series in Auckland.

By then, Meek had got together with Dunedin-based company Animation Research to form a new venture, Virtual Spectator.

The company specialises in technology that uses global positioning to allow relative positions to be displayed in 3D animated form.

The result is much like a Playstation game, except what you are watching is actually happening, and even the modest Meek cannot help his enthusiasm get the better of him.

Virtual Spectator, he insists, "is going to revolutionise the way we watch sport."

But on the first day of the Louis Vuitton Cup in Auckland - Meek can recall the date exactly - the revolution was nearly over before it began when the data the company needed did not arrive. His entire career flashed before his eyes in one blood-draining moment.

"We had built this whole thing up for this one day and it was like the whole thing was just going to crash. Sure enough, 24 hours later it all came through and it worked fine after that, but those are the kinds of hair-raising, exciting moments in business when you wonder if it's all worth it."

After some argy-bargy over sponsorship rights, US-based Quokka Sports allowed Virtual Spectator to jump on the America's Cup bandwagon as well - a move that Meek describes as a milestone for the company.

There is now interest from all over the world in the technology, and from many sports, including motor racing, golf, rugby and soccer.

While Meek concedes it is likely to be some time before the company turns a profit, he is convinced that the technology's potential is enormous and that it will eventually become a whole new pay-per-view way of watching sport.

Ultimately, he believes, the company will be worth "tens of millions, in fact probably hundreds of millions." But for now, he concedes, it is still in its infancy.

Since the America's Cup, Virtual Spectator has received $6.5 million from chairman Lindsay Fergusson, listed company IT Capital and American-based venture capitalist Snider Capital. It employs 16 people, with a further four in Britain, and is setting up a New York office to help with marketing in the United States.

"There's so much interest from other organisations around the world who want to be a part of it," said Meek.

"The kind of meetings we're having with major sports events - it's just completely out of this world."

According to Meek, no other company has such well-advanced technology, and he has a swag of international awards to prove it.

In the early days, he made a point of travelling to overseas conferences to keep an eye on the competition. "Every time we saw who was winning and why they were winning, and we were determined to beat them."

He also made a point of talking to other companies about what they were up to, and was pleasantly surprised to find they were equally impressed with his own portfolio.

"What that did for me was make me much more comfortable about being competitive in New Zealand ...

"We're so paranoid about being down here in New Zealand that we do seem to take bigger risks and do seem to be a bit more determined about pushing things through."

As for the future, he remains open-minded about what is best for the company, but suggests a public float or a partnership with a large media group is likely at some point.

In the meantime, though, he has a lot more sport to watch, and a lot more work to do.

"We're the doing the PGA Golf coming up in November in Australia and I've been instructed I've got to go on the golfing circuit," he grins.

So is this the perfect job for a sports-mad computer buff?

"I think it is," he says. "I think it's getting pretty close."

What does "The Next Wave" of companies need to keep the momentum rolling? Send your views to the Business Editor by fax 09-3736423 or e-mail business@herald.co.nz