#102 🚀 Sports Tech investment rising, defying global trends

News, features & insights from the world of Sports Tech & Biz. Every Week.

A longer edition today, lots of news to get through. We start with some quick analysis: quarter-on-quarter comparison of investment in sports tech startups vs global investment in startups. There’s a glimmer of hope, and we’re excited.

As always, have a great weekend!

Sports Tech Investment: Defying the global trend

Last week we focused on M&A activity in sports tech, which in 2024 so far is at around 40% of 2023 levels.

At the start of Oct, in our Sept investment recap, we highlighted how Q3 was a bright spark in an otherwise dour year for sports tech investment. By the end of the quarter, total investment this year got near the $2 billion mark, putting it just about on track to surpass last year's $2.3 billion.

Decent, but not exactly much to get super excited about. That said, the most important aspect of that statistic is its context.

According to Crunchbase "In every major startup region in the world — North America, Europe and Asia — startup investment fell in Q3".

When they say “fell”, they are referring to the immediately preceding quarter. As you can see above, and probably know already, the global picture has been pretty bleak for a while now.

Except for sports tech, where Q3 marked an improvement over all previous quarters going back to Q1 2023.

Surely this is a good thing?

Yes, it’s just one quarter and we don’t want to jump the gun here but we’d like to think it is. For a couple of reasons:

1. We're generally positive people at SportsTechX.

2. The macro drivers are still strong - interest in sports investment is growing.

Take a look at these recent news stories

1. The Texas Permanent School Fund Corporation made a anchor investment of $200 million into Velocity Capital Management (“Velocity”), a PE firm focused on sports, media and entertainment ecosystem. It's not often that pension funds invest take a GP stake in an SME-focused PE firm. This represents the continued institutionalization of the ecosystem.

2. LEAD VC's Locker Room Fund announced new athletes joining - Harry Kane & Brooks Koepka among them. This follows a series of partnership announcements from the fund - with the Orlando Magic and FC Cincinnati, amongst others.

3. Staying with athlete investors, Mercury 13, a women's sports focused fund, added Italian legend Giorgio Chiellini to their investor group. Women’s sports is a super hot topic for investment.

Then there’s the list of new sports tech focused funds announced this year: Match Ventures (EU) Athlete Ventures (Germany), The Collectiv (US), The Unived Fund (India), Ruta VC (Ukraine) and many more we know of privately. More on that in a separate post.

A strong Q4 for investment will set up 2025 nicely. Here’s hoping that Q3 is the start of the upturn we’ve all been waiting for.

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🐤 EARLY BIRD SPECIAL: Leading up to the new report, we’re running a pre-launch offer

• VC Report PRO edition: With ~20 additional pages for those who want to dive deeper into Sports Tech investment in the last year (see 2023 report)

• SportsTechDB PRO: With additional filters such as location, sector, funding raised, sports, tech tags and others to look for the right startup out of 7k+

Purchase the package of 2024 Sports Tech VC Report Pro + SportsTech DB Pro at 50% off, both for €999!

📣 LAST CALL FOR REPORT FEATURES 📣

Fancy a feature in our upcoming report? We have only one startup feature spot remaining so let us know ASAP.

Your startup / product / announcement / fund/ initiative could be in 50k+ social impressions and 2k+ downloads (numbers the 2023 edition received).

Top News from the World of Sports Tech & Biz

🏌️‍♂️ TGL presented by SoFi, the new tech-infused, team golf league founded by TMRW Sports in partnership with the PGA TOUR, has announced its inaugural season schedule, premiering Tuesday, Jan. 7 2025. 

♟️ Magnus Carlsen just announced his next move: new platform Take Take Take, an app to will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way.

🚀 SkyQuest projected that the Global Sports Technology Market will reach a value of USD 79.43 Billion by 2031, with a CAGR of 20.10% during the forecast period (2024-2031). 

🏀 The NBA unveiled “The Heist II” campaign as part of its promotional efforts for the 2024 Emirates NBA Cup. This multi-platform initiative is designed to enhance fan engagement and expand the NBA’s reach across diverse audiences. 

🏆 Sports Tech World Series (STWS) announced the finalists in its 2024 sports technology awards (ANZSTA) program, to be presented as part of Australia Sports Innovation Week (ASIW) in Melbourne.

🏀 GameChanger, the youth sports app for live streaming and scorekeeping, announced the launch of Film Room, an AI-powered video analysis tool for youth basketball and volleyball. 

⚽ Trivago announced a new partnership with Liverpool FC manager Jürgen Klopp to front its AI-powered marketing campaign, brokered by sports marketing agency SPORTFIVE. 

🤝 FuboTV and The Athletic announced an in-depth partnership making Fubo the official live TV streaming partner of The Athletic. The multi-year agreement incorporates content and product integrations as well as plans to co-market the two brands to their respective audiences.

💥 The Sphere Entertainment Co. and Abu Dhabi tourism officials announced that Abu Dhabi is set to become the next location to host multimedia entertainment in the unique spherical structure. 

🏈 Roblox has uploaded a new animation pack titled “NFL Animation Pack”, available for purchase for 250 Robux (~$3.2).

🏎️ HUGO released their third standalone game on Roblox, HUGO FASTER taking their partnership with the Visa Cash App RB (VCARB) F1 Team “from IRL to URL”.

🏀 The WNBA players voted to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement three years before its expiration in a push for a more lucrative deal and higher compensation. The decision comes on the back of a surge in ratings & attendance, and recently signing a media deal worth six times its previous one. 

🏓 Padel Australia, the governing body for one of the country's fastest-growing sports, partnered with sports tech investment firm Mindspring who are now an official infrastructure partner of Padel Australia.  

⚽ Liverpool FC unveiled a new collaboration with Google Pixel and The Powerhouse Project to introduce the Pixel FC Academy, an initiative to empower young women to break into the world of football media and content creation.

🏈 Rob Gronkowski joined his former Patriots teammate Julian Edelman as a partner in the studio ‘Nuthouse Sports’, with 'Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules' as the first project. 

⚾ The MLB is beginning preliminary testing of tech to create more clarity on ‘check swings’, using the same Hawk-Eye technology as the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge system.

Money Talks:

🤝 Velocity Capital Management, a PE firm with deep operating expertise and investment experience across the sports ecosystem, announced a strategic partnership with the Texas Permanent School Fund Corporation which has committed $200 million as an anchor investment in the fund.

⚾ Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is apparently open to selling the franchise and has engaged in active discussions with a group of prospective buyers that included former All-Star pitcher Dave Stewart. 

🏈 PE billionaire Tom Gores agreed to pay $750 million to buy 27% of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.

💪🏽 Women’s sport in the UK is set for a massive boost as the Government announced a scheme to drive investment in elite clubs and leagues across the country, as part of a new pledge to make the UK the world’s top destination for women’s sport investment. 

🎮 The Malaysian government announced a substantial investment into the country’s esports ecosystem, allocating RM20m ($4.65 million) to the development of the industry.

💰 The Barça Innovation Hub (BIHUB) invested an undisclosed amount in Rimbarlat, a start-up developing therapies to accelerate muscular regeneration. FC Barcelona will provide the use of its medical facilities for the clinical trial phase of the project over the next few months.

💰 Golfer Brooks Koepka, joined by Harry Kane and Brayden Schenn among others, invested in Locker Room- a newly launched athlete investment fund from sports tech investment platform Lead. The fund is in the midst of a $25 million target raise and has already made four investments.

💰 Quiet Golf successfully closed a seed investment round of an undisclosed amount, led by Old Tom Capital.

🤝 The Forest Road Company, a LA based investment firm, acquired the ERT Formula E Team for an undisclosed amount and rebranded to Kiro Race Co. ahead of Season 11 of the Formula E World Championship.

🤝 Sony Music acquired a pair of fan engagement-focused apps called Songwhip and Fansifter, which were demonstrated at Sony Music’s Immersive Tech Day in London on 22 October.

Latest from our channels

🔙 STX Article: The Rise of Esports- Transforming the Future of Competitive Gaming.

✅ STX Monthly: Last month’s sports tech dealflow, in case you missed it.

💪🏽 SportsTech AllStars Recap: Innovation in Broadcasting Tech