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 wrote about the rising costs of hosting the Olympic games. Since writing, the scrutiny about the costs accruing live in Paris is only increasing. Locals are becoming upset with the amount of disruption the games are causing, and costs seem to be ballooning in real time. I am extremely hopeful that the events go off without a hitch, though in the long term, I still expect the Olympics will be forced to change its overall structure at some point. In the meantime, we all get to enjoy an event unparalleled of scale and spectacle!
The Gold Standard of the Future?
It’s almost that time once again, where all across the United States we gather in front of our screens at random times in the day to watch a few countries dominate the Olympics. This year’s summer games in Paris carry a bit of extra personal meaning as it could have taken place in my backyard in Boston. A decade ago, Boston was selected as the US city t…
Next week, I’ll be providing an overview of potential product opportunities I see for different portions of the sports tech market. In particular, with so many new individual brands finding success, my focus will be on “infrastructure for X” business opportunities— ways that one might be able to leverage the overall boom of the sports tech market without making a bet on an individual product, sports, or company.
Stat of the Week
I’m introducing a new segment to the Roundup— the (sports) Stat of the Week. The inaugural stat comes from this year’s Tour de France, where the top two competitors for the last four years— Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar— once again finished 1st and 2nd place last weekend. Over the last four races, the pair have totaled nearly 330 hours of racing, and have a cumulative difference of 3 seconds between the two:
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Company Cable
Company Cable highlights major and minor updates from companies around the sports innovation space.
CBS Sports' parent company Paramount announced a merger (acquisition) of Skydance Media. There is a LOT for these two companies to sort out before the deal is completely finalized. On the sports front, they will need to detangle the NFL’s investment in Skydance media and its relation to the media rights for CBS Sports. I don’t expect the deal to be finalized until the middle of next year at the earliest, but it represents further consolidation of broadcasting and media companies related explicitly to sports.
Scottish startup Recast raised a $5M funding round from Morpheus Ventures. Recast is a startup that proposes a new way of engaging with sports and entertainment media directly through an online marketplace as opposed to complex pre-ordained media rights deals. The company has gone through some challenging patches in the last couple years, even falling into administration less than a year ago before securing this funding. While I could see this business model taking off with smaller leagues and individual teams looking to monetize their coverage directly, it will certainly be a challenge to make ubiquitous.
Sports sponsorship planning platform Luscid has secured a $1.2M seed funding round. The company provides a combination of marketplace and analytics tools to connects teams, leagues, and athletes with sponsorship opportunities. I think it’s a super cool idea, particularly with the rise of sponsorship opportunities for NCAA athletes. On the flip side, I had a pretty big challenge locating their website due to the similarity with Lucid— an electric car company and fellow startup.
Cheerleading gear-focused Varsity Brands is being sold acquired from Bain Capital by KKR. I’ll fully admit that the details of this transaction, which involves both issuance of new debt and equity, are well over my head. The overall sale has been valued at ~$5 Billion, which is much higher than I anticipated for a cheerleading gear brand!
The non-fungible token (NFT)-based sports collectible startup Fanera has partnered with Saudi Arabia. At its core, Fanera is a social media platform that uses blockchain-based features such as NFT’s to promote revenue production and fan engagement. This partnership and the relocation of Fanera to Saudi Arabia appear to be motivated by the upcoming 2034 World Cup being hosted in the country.
Decathlon announced the creation of Decathlon Pulse. Pulse appears to be part-VC fund, part-startup incubator that will seek to identify and develop sports tech products and companies. Decathlon is clearly angling to become more than just a sports retailer (albeit the largest in the world), and will likely be competing for new product development opportunities with gear companies, teams, and leagues around the world.
New Releases
New Releases shows off new products and features that are hitting the market.
New Balance has released their first ever set of football cleats. Earlier this year, New Balance signed college football sensation Marvin Harrison Jr. to an endorsement deal, snatching him away from the likes of Nike and Adidas. New Balance is a company that appears to have some headroom available for expansion, and I believe they’ll make a concerted advance in the NFL and other cleat-based sports like soccer, softball, and track as they build an understanding of the design and manufacturing of this family of products.
Newly introduced ShredShox are looking to bring air suspension to skiing. Honestly, I have no idea whether or not this company will succeed, but this has to be one of the more dramatic product innovations in the ski market in recent memory, and I’m all about it! I love this type of bold product design for a difficult challenge— reducing stress and strain with uneven ski terrain.
Samsung announced a suite of new fitness-oriented product, including the new Galaxy Ring, which is poised to compete with the Aura Ring. It is a matter of time until Apple releases its own ring-based fitness tracker, which I believe may end up surpassing the popularity of watch-based tracking for non-athletes. This release also highlights the battle between subscription-based and up-front-purchase finance models for these products, a topic I’ll write about later this year.
EA finally released its first College Football video game in over a decade. The reviews have certainly been mixed— with most reviewers asserting that the game has released in a feature-incomplete state. However, the game is already super popular, and its return is yet another harbinger of the changing college sports financial landscape. Originally, this game disappeared about 10 years ago due to name-image-likeness (NIL) restrictions in college sports that no longer exist.
Smartphone brand OnePlus has released a new smartwatch, the "Watch 2R," following the trend of its smartphone competitors in Apple, Samsung, Google, and others. Based on the release specifications, I don’t believe this watch will extend its reach far beyond the existing market of OnePlus smartphone users.
Some News
Some News shares select news stories from across the sports and design world.
The NBA is set to finalize its new media rights deal in the coming days, looking to earn $7B in revenue each season from broadcasting alone. For context, the NFL finalized a $10B/year media rights deal in 2021, which speaks to the popularity dominance of the league. It will be interesting to see if longtime NBA media partner TNT will finally be removed from the picture, and how much streaming-exclusive games take hold.
The IOC formally announced that the first official Esports Olympics will be held in 2025 in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia just held the inaugural Esports World Championships in Riyadh, and seems to be trying to cement its place as an esports hub. It will be fascinating to see how many games are actually played at this Olympics, and how sustainable it becomes, but I see this is a great move on the IOC’s part.
Lululemon partnered with NASCAR to produce branded merchandise at the upcoming NASCAR Chicago event. I’ll freely admit this is a crossover I never saw coming, but maybe Lulu is starting to branch out from its core customer base. Despite growing dramatically over the past decade, Lulu has generally remained a relatively focused brand. To see them branch out into new markets like trail running, cycling, and to entirely new customer bases for lifestyle apparel means they may perceive they’ve hit the ceiling with their core customers and need to expand to grow.
Lyft has increased the price of its Citi Bike offerings by 20%— not a traditional piece of sports-related news, per se, but a good reminder that most urban bike-rental services are actually private businsses. In general, I expect bike ownership to continue growing in the near future, particularly for urban areas. Bike rentals are becoming increasingly expensive, and I don’t expect that trend to slow down any time soon!
Genius Sports announced a partnership with X (formerly Twitter), to help advertisers track real-time fan engagement trends during the Olympics, and I assume that this partnership and product offering will extend beyond an Olympic trial period. Genius Sports seems to be in the media spotlight pretty frequently right now, and is aiming to take advantage of the rise of sports media coverage and sports gambling to drive its first profitable year of operation.
Manchester City has partnered with Fortnite to create a new game mode. In the announcement of the launch, the team mentioned their goal to expand their presence in the video game and esports space. Professional sports teams from all types of leagues have been investing in their esports organizations, and Man City seem among the most aggressive Premier League clubs.
Grab Bag
Grab Bag features interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
ESPN released a list of its top 100 athletes of the 21st century. This endeavor was practically impossible to begin with, and I’ve seen mostly criticism of the list online. However, it’s still a blast to interrogate ESPN’s selections and reminisce about the incredible athletes we’ve watched over the last 25 years!
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer interviewed with John Stankey to discuss the new Intuit Dome, the future home of the team. The interview transcript is worth a read, particularly to get Steve’s take on in-arena fan engagement practices, and the rise of sports gambling in relation to live events.
DC Rainmaker took a behind-the-scenes tour of the first Tour De France time trial stage. The video is predominantly focused on the tech used at the race, but does a great job of walking through the complex web of logistics that support and execute an event as complicated as the Tour.