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 hockey gear market and looked at why the two biggest companies in the industry (CCM and Bauer) are both up for sale right now by their current ownership groups. It was a blast to take a trip down memory lane into the world of hockey, and fascinating to really break down what makes the sports’ gear market so difficult to navigate. The post proved quite timely, as CCM may have just finalized terms for its sale, which would be a great way to punctuate the article and may actually require me to add my first author update to the piece!
What the Puck is Happening in the Hockey Gear Market?
My “illustrious” hockey career ended around 2016, when I transitioned full-time to rowing (a classic high school sports transition, of course). Fast forward to 2024, and I interrupted my retirement with my first visit to a hockey shop in nearly a decade. It felt like coming back to your childhood hometown after a long time away, with so many familiar si…
The topic for next week’s article hasn’t been fully locked in, but it’s very likely I’ll be writing about the expansion of the NCAA Football playoffs, and the impacts of its larger bracket. In general, I’m not surprised that the NCAA would want to seize upon the popularity of the sport to increase the amount of high-profile game coverage and revenue, but the decision may have some unintended consequences. The topic also serves as as way to look at the wide range of playoff formats used today throughout professional sports!
Stat of the Week
The NFL season is in full swing now, and triumphs, injuries, and losses have abounded since it kicked off (seriously, why have there been so many injuries to start this season). A handful of teams, including some potentially great ones like the Baltimore Ravens, have started their campaigns 0-2, which for all intents and purposes is a statistical death knell for their season.
According to Yahoo Sports, only three teams in the history of the NFL have won the Super Bowl after starting 0-2, meaning that about 5% of all 56 Super Bowl winners have been 0-2 teams to start the year. Since the NFL postseason expanded to include 14 teams in 2020, only 6.25% of the 0-2 teams have even made the playoffs. To take it a step further, a Reddit sleuth looked at the most recent three years where the 17-game regular season was introduced and found that even with one additional game, less than 10% of 0-2 teams actually made the playoffs, and about 20% even finished with a winning record. Ravens fans might want to temper expectations for this year…
Thankfully, the Patriots start 1-1, so we’re clearly still in it for the Super Bowl.
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.
Home Run Dugout, a baseball spin on Top Golf, finalized a $22.5MM Series A, led by Lagniappe Capital Partners. The company plans to use the funding to add two new gamified batting locations in Scottsdale, AZ and San Antonio, TX. Lagniappe is an investment fund focused exclusively on live entertainment and leisure businesses, and clearly hopes that Home Run Dugout can ride the same tail winds as Top Golf.
Vista Outdoors confirmed a $3.3 Billion offer for its kinetics (weaponry) holdings on its most recent investor call. Vista owns a variety of sports and outdoors brands including Giro, Camelbak, and Fox Racing, but has significant presence in the weapons industry as well, with its subsidiaries like Remington and Federal. So much focus has been set on the Amer Sports IPO the last couple years that Vista’s outdoor gear conglomerate has somewhat slid under the radar.
Harlan Capital Partners has earmarked $200M in investment funds for distribution on the NIL platform NILLY. Honestly, the current wild west that is the college athletic NIL market is even crazier than I had imagined. As opposed to approaching these new opportunity with some level of conservatism or skepticism, it seems like investors are eager to flood the NIL market with cash, which might lead to a crash in the near future, though it’s difficult to predict what form that would take.
Oura has acquired the metabolic health company Veri, a Finnish tech company focused on providing continuous blood-glucose level monitoring via a patch device. It’s not entirely clear how Oura will attempt to integrate their hardware and software products into their own offerings, but it certainly is a good time to be a device-centric health tech company right now— your odds of being acquired by a major tech company are quite high.
Indian-based startup Spolto has raised $1M in seed funding. Spolto is hoping to become the default platform for connecting athletes with coaches and academies across a wide variety of sports. Their focus is on urban areas in India, and they provide connections to coaching services across a huge variety of sports including gymnastics and pickleball!
The Boston Globe has launched "B-side Sports" alongside Shadow Lion, a production company owned by Tom Brady. It’s not surprising to see the newspaper branch out into new forms of media, and it will be interesting to see what form the products actually take. I’m a bit concerned the content may be noise in the endless sea of video content consumers have available today, but I’m excited to be proven wrong.
The Orlando Magic are joining teams with Lead One to break into the VC space. Not much else to add here— the trend of professional sports teams and leagues becoming venture capitalists continues!
New Releases
New Releases shows off new products and features that are hitting the market.
360 Hoops is set to launch its triple-sided basketball hoop for youth sports this fall. I mean… this is an awesome product, despite its simplicity. It’s easy to imagine a half dozen new playground games that could be created with this type of product, but maybe even easier to anticipate some whacky injuries occurring when three or more people are running straight towards each other while focusing on a hoop.
Blackcrows has unveiled their 2025 ski lineup, and the annual tradition of me getting an itchy wallet when new ski gear is released begins again. I’m a huge fan of my Navis Freebird set from Blackcrows, and the Chamonix-based brand still seems to be on a steady rise in the ski industry.
North Face is beginning to contribute to the next generation of radical trail shoe design. Between this funky design and the look of On’s “spray-on” running shoes, I’m hoping that we’re turning the corner into a new wave of completely new and unique performance footwear designs. This new shoe is similar to the Cybertruck for me— I'm not a fan of the specific design, but I hold optimism that it will spark a much more diverse set of product aesthetics in the future.
Field Vision Sports has launched its AI-based football sports betting guide. The company is trying to use AI and advanced analytics to outcompete sports books, which rely more heavily upon average historical data. The company is looking at expanding to the NBA in the future, once they land their value proposition in the NFL.
GoPro has unveiled its newest lineup of action cameras. GoPros feel like iPhones nowadays where they have such a solid formula in their base product, but don’t typically make dramatic year-over-year changes or upgrades. With that said, some of the new magnetically-attached mounts and accessories for the new models look extremely useful.
Sportico is launching a sports-business community and newsletter called “Club Sportico.” They join a long line of media entities in creating a coverage vertical dedicated specifically to sports business, and their emphasis on community engagement on Substack might be enough to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Some News
Some News shares select news stories from across the sports and design world.
NBA Africa announced the startups selected for its first incubator demo day— I highly recommend taking a look through the incubated companies! It’s a super interesting mix of applications and industries that extends beyond what I had anticipated for a sports league incubator, including everything from digital comics to mentorship platforms to in-arena fan payment systems. In my opinion, it’s a more creative and potentially impactful set of applications than I’ve seen in many other similar sports tech incubators.
TikTok has partnered with sports-franchise aggregator Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the owner of many DC-area sports teams and arenas. TikTok will be a branded sponsor on the jersey of the Washington Capitals and will also post exclusive collaborations and digital events with other local DC teams including the Wizards and the Mystics. TikTok seems to have high momentum in the sports media and fan engagement markets at the moment that I’m sure will only expand in the short term.
Citadel's Ken Griffin contributed personally to hire the new US men's soccer coach. To be honest, I didn’t know that you could just privately inject funding into a specific national sports team for a specific goal, but I guess it makes sense, especially for sports teams that are more challenged financially. With that said, I feel like it does introduce some interesting incentives for these teams and their governing bodies…
iCapital has gained investment access to the Avenue Sports Opportunities Fund for select financial advisors. Avenue Sports is a part owner of the Premier League team Ipswich Town Football Club and Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods’ golf league TGL. I firmly believe that it is only a matter of time until every day traders can actually purchase equity in professional sports teams, which is going to be a WILD time.
The Women's Elite Rugby League has finalized its list of 6 inaugural teams and cities. I’m excited to see Boston on the list of host cities and for the league to kick off in spring of 2025!
Premium sporting goods companies like On and Arc'Teryx have posted strong growth in 2024. Amer Sports, the parent company of Arc’Teryx, saw 16% revenue growth overall in the past year and On realized nearly 25% growth in net sales in the same period. I am still torn over whether or not I think this level of growth is sustainable, but it sure is impressive!
DirecTV and Disney have settled a dispute to bring Disney's channels back to the satellite TV service. DirecTV walks away with a fair amount of flexibility in terms of what subsets of Disney’s wide offerings it can break out into individual consumer packages (e.g. kids channels). DirecTV sports fans also get access to ESPN again, which is a must-have as the NFL season gets into full swing. Disney, for their part, gains back around 10 million potential DirecTV viewers. It seems a fair trade.
Grab Bag
Grab Bag features interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
NBC has launched an interactive site highlighting the sports tech startups it incubated earlier in 2024. The website itself might be one of the most data-hungry I’ve encountered in a while, but it’s a fun way to view a short video demo of each company’s ideas!
The BBC released a video overview of the Miami Heat and their startup 601 Analytics, which provides arena operators detailed information about fan movement, purchases, and engagement. About 1/5 of NBA teams now use the 601 Analytics platform and the Heat are extending its use case to concert venues and other types of sports arenas. I believe that many professional sports teams will continue to build in-house tech development resources, but mainly for in-game play improvements, so it will be interesting if this fan-centric startup is emulated by any other major sports teams or organizations like the Fenway Group.
Run provided a behind-the-scenes look at how Hoka provided its sponsored athletes with the shoes to win UTMB two years running. Christophe Aubonnet, a senior manager of product engineering, undertakes a massive amount of manual shoe customization for Hoka’s trail athletes, much of which ends up in production versions of their shoes. Some day I’d love to have someone tailoring trail shoes to my specific foot shape and biomechanics.