Geek Locker
Welcome back to the Geek Locker Roundup— your bi-weekly collection of the latest sports innovation news, product releases, and design resources!
Last week, I dug into how likely players are to win a championship during their career in each of the four major US sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL). This turned out to be a topic that required a lot more manual database creation and combination than I expected, but was extremely fun to write about. The article also looks at the impact that an athlete’s greatness (measured by number of career points) on an their chances of winning it all. There were a lot of interesting insights within this topic and I recommend giving the article a read!
Next week, I’ll be writing about Tahoe’s Broken Arrow Sky Race, the rising popularity of trail running, and the potential market expansion magnitude of trail running-specific gear and apparel. It will be a lot to dig into, and I’m excited to work through estimating the overall market value for different types of trail running and outdoor gear products.
As always, I appreciate your engagement and please share with others who might be interested in reading about sports innovation. On to the news!
Company Cable
Company Cable highlights major and minor updates from companies around the sports innovation space.
Avenue Capital Group has raised $445 million for its new sports-focused fund. The fund has already made investments in a wide variety of entities, including a professional bull-riding team, the PGA, and acquired the rights to the San Francisco team in Tiger Woods’ new indoor golf league. Avenue Capital is following many other funds like Arctos and RedBird focusing on investments in sports, and I continue to wonder if investment funds are starting to become late to this party…
A Cornell student is launching an outdoor gear marketplace aimed at connecting small brands with small retailers. In my mind, it’s quite a smart business model as it leverages the rising popularity of outdoor gear “micro brands” without making a bet on a single one. Although many of us may not interact with the marketplace directly in the coming years, I hope it has some great early success when it launches, since it might make all our local gear shopping more exciting and varied!
Golf club operations software startup Whoosh raised a $10.3MM Series A. Investors included Andy Roddick and Larry Fitzgerald as the company is looking to expand its digital tee sheet, booking, and groundskeeping software suite while including new payment platforms like Square.
Fanatics announced its new trading card marketplace, Fanatics Collect, and has partnered with Sotheby's to auction some of the most valuable sports trading cards of all time. In 2023, Fanatics purchased online sports memorabilia auction house PWCC, and is clearly looking to place a foothold on the broader memorabilia market, starting with trading cards. As many are looking towards digital trading cards as the future, physical versions (including Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering cards, selfishly) seem to be holding their value and interest well.
Naomi Osaka's production and media company Hana Kuma received funding from The Players Fund. The tennis professional-led investment fund joins the ranks of Lebron James, the Fenway Sports Group, and Nike to partner with, or invest in, Hana Kuma. It’s not entirely clear to me what Hana Kuma’s business model is from their website alone, but they seem to be building quite a set of investors and backers!
Startup LunchTable has raised $2.4M to enable sports teams to better engage fans. LunchTable also announced a pilot partnership with the Cincinnati Reds and FC Cincinnati, furthering the company’s short term mission of having fans engage on their social platform at live sporting events to drive fan engagement with their local teams and fellow fans. The goal is to create an online space that is fun to use for fans and allows teams to gain insights about their fans’ preferences and generate content for the team, effectively for free.
New Releases
New Releases shows off new products and features that are hitting the market.
Nike and Hyperice have teamed up to create footwear and apparel aimed at controlling body temperature and promoting recovery. I think it’s likely a matter of time until these types of temperature-controlling products become more ubiquitous, particularly for serious amateur athletes (they’re already quite prevalent .
Away has launched a skiing-themed lineup of its traditional luggage, which for me begs the question of when they'll release an actual ski bag? It seems like the ski bag “market” could use a new entrant that has a radical take on how to pack skis and accompanying apparel in a more efficient way, but TBD if that disruptor is Away.
The NHL's new Salt Lake City expansion team debuted its temporary name and jerseys ahead of their first season. The Utah Hockey Club is not the most inspired temporary team name, but I’m still hoping they end up with the Utah Yeti as their official name after next season. If I knew I’d only have a team name for a single year, I’d pick something insane to get fans excited and drive jersey sales.
The app MyFandom has officially launched (somewhat quietly), and is aiming to become the future platform for fans to engage with each other surrounding live events and historic games. In theory, fans can comment on, review, and tag sporting events that they attended or watched live to interact with others at the event. It will be interesting if this ends up looking more like a social network, or a Yelp for live sporting events!
Some News
Some News shares select news stories from across the sports and design world.
The battle for custody of the Kansas City sports franchises continues to heat up, as the state of Kansas has officially passed bills that could provide low-interest bonding to the Chiefs or Royals for their new stadium projects. Voters in Jackson County, Missouri, the current home of both franchises, recently shot down a bill to help fund the teams’ new stadiums in their state. I am fascinated to see how this plays out!
Shaun White has launched a new snowboarding and freestyle skiing league, "The Snow League." The league is set to launch in 2025, and will represent the first formal “league” for winter freestyle athletes. It seeks to compete with the likes of the Dew Tour and the X Games for winter action sports viewership. I’m excited to see how this changes the action sports landscape more broadly!
Front Office Sports released a long article about the rise, and current battle for control of Pro Football Focus (PFF). PFF has been at the forefront of football statistics for over a decade, and has recently struggled to transition from a stat provider and analyst for teams to a more consumer-focused company.
In regional northeast news, outdoor sports store Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) filed for bankruptcy. EMS was a longtime competitor with REI in New England (and possible elsewhere), whose only major national competition nowadays appears to be Backcountry.
Front Office Sports also announced its inaugural "Tuned In Summit" to bring sports media giants together. The event is going to cover topics including women’s sports, the future of streaming/media, and the impact of sports betting. The event is being organized and led by journalists and will be held in NYC on September 10th, 2024. I may sign up to cover as a “member of the media,” if I’ll be accepted as one!
Grab Bag
Grab Bag features interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
At the end of April, researchers in the UK launched “Project ACL,” which is aiming to discern the large discrepancy between the rate at which men and women tear their ACL’s playing sports like soccer. Female soccer players are multiple times more likely to tear their ACL than men, and to date, there has not been a definitive answer as to why.
Sports retail giant Decathlon released a behind-the-scenes look at its use of Autodesk's generative design tools for its new swim fin release. As a CAD, CFD, and FEM nerd, it’s very cool to see how the team selected parameters for their design optimization, and opened my own eyes to the power of generative CAD tools.
Samsung continues to roll out marketing and demos of its colored e-paper, which has the potential to be the next transformative screen type. E-paper is nearly ubiquitous in e-readers like Kindle and Nook, but has struggled to find a place in tablets and other writing/entertainment devices since it is typically black-and-white, with a low refresh rate. If this technology continues to improve and decrease in price, it could be the foundation of many future glare-free devices.