Geek Locker Roundup #20
October 4th, 2024
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 expansion of the College Football Playoff (CFP) and how its growth from two to the current twelve teams affects the economics and competitive balance of the league. It was fun to expand this basic analysis to other sports and take a trip down memory lane to look at the balance that chance and skill play in the outcomes of different sports. In general, I believe that leagues looking to expand their playoff are aiming to earn more revenue rather than make a more fair determination of the “best” team in a given season. I also have concerns about future expansion as more investment changes the incentives for leagues and teams, but all these thoughts and more are captured in the article!
NCAA Football Playoff 2030: 64-team Bracket Madness
Before 1998, college football national champions were simply selected by voting committees through a poll (which today sounds absolutely crazy). For 15 years afterwards, the NCAA Football national championship was determined by the top two teams on the regular season playing a single-elimination championship game. There was of course some subjectivity i…
Next week there is likely to be a temporary hiatus likely followed by a pair of articles the following bi-weekly cycle. I am about to enter a pretty crazy period of work and personal travel on top of some impending deadlines that will all drive a delay in some content. It is very possible that I am underestimating the free time I’ll have for research and writing, but I am excited to double-dip on articles in the second half of October!
Please stay tuned for more content, and if you have any requested topics, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Stat of the Week
I don’t think about it often, but I think it’s actually pretty interesting that baseball is really the only major team sport in the US that doesn’t have some sort of time-based limit to end a game. It’s entirely based on events, and although it’s fun to dream up ways that baseball could be tied to a concrete duration of play, Major League Baseball has made a huge effort in the past half decade to reduce the time and variance associated with individual games. If soccer matches are the ideal in terms of duration predictability, the MLB has been very far from the best in terms how easy it is to plan around a game.
This pursuit has seemingly been relatively successful, though. In particular, the addition of the pitch clock in 2023 reduced the average game time down to 2:38, over half an hour shorter than it was in 2021! Extrapolated over the full 2023 season, this saved over 1,200 hours of play time, or about 50 days in total. While there may be advertising and marketing hits to this reduced broadcast time, there’s no doubt that this contraction of play time has made the viewing experience more digestible for casual viewers. Others might say it’s removed some of the relaxing cadence from the game, but if the MLB didn’t think it was necessary to shorten games in order to garner fans and compete with other leagues, they wouldn’t have made such a dramatic shift.
I still think it would be cool to test baseball games on a 1.5-2 hour timer, with each team getting the same number of at-bats if the time limit is reached before both teams have evened up. The added element of not knowing exactly how many innings you have to play and how many pitchers to use could be extremely fun. Until that day though, it will be interesting to see how much further the MLB pushes its time-saving measures!
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
There are a lot of company updates this week, so I’ll try to keep each brief!
Snapchat is partnering with the AI-based sports content platform WSC Sports. The goal is to make automated workflows for cropping, uploading, and publishing sports content, likely setting the table for further competition with other social media platforms like Reddit, who is teaming up with Genius Sports for live scoring and stats.
Telecom company Rogers Communications has bought out rival Bell's share of the Toronoto Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment group. It’s wild that these two telecom companies co-owned this team for so long!
Lionel Messi joins a long list of sports stars by launching his own production company, 525 Rosario. They will enter a very crowded celebrity production company market.
German startup Exakt Health raised $2M in seed funding for its AI-generated running training plans. The company will use the money to launch new athlete performance tracking and injury prevention features, and recently announced its product is now free for recipients of certain German health insurance policies, which is a great way to build an active user base as the company grows.
English football club Everton has a likely new owner: American billionaire Dan Friedkin— just what everyone asked for! On a serious note, it will be interesting to see how much capital he injects into the club after the purchase, and what the downstream impacts end up being.
Startup Mapo Tapo has raised a EUR 1.15M seed funding round. The company has run its outdoor sports trip and experience marketplace business for nearly 5 years, and in that time has only received additional external funding from a separate pre-seed round in 2022.
Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown has launched his own sneaker and gear company called 741. Similar to sports celebrities launching production companies, I think athletes launching their own gear companies once they reach super stardom will become even more common practice.
Motorsports hydration startup FluidLogic has raised $15M in a Series A extension. The core value proposition of their product line for users wearing headgear is simple: drink water without needing to use your hands. This value extends to other users like military operators, pilots, and maybe even team athletes like cyclists eventually. A $15M Series A seems like a major investment on the surface, but the terms of the deal are unknown and hardware startups tend to require more capital up front to fulfill manufacturing, assembly, and sale obligations!
AI-powered home gym startup OxeFit has raised $17.5M in new funding. A lot of high-profile professional athletes have invested in OxeFit as the company tries to popularize its premium (i.e. expensive) smart gym solution. The company has raised over $70M in total since 2021.
The Curling Group has raise $5M in seed funding. The company aims to grow the popularity of curling around the world, and set up new facilities and leagues in the process. If I had known that I could just pick a sport and raise money to expand it, I would have founded “The Ladderball Group” years ago.
New Releases
New Releases shows off new products and features that are hitting the market.
EA is going to launch a mobile social media platform later this year in Spain. Simultaneously, EA FC is teaming up with NBC's Peacock streaming service, so the company is clearly on the hunt for ways to expand its media impact beyond just its gaming division. I am generally skeptical of these types of efforts, and I do wonder if EA is beginning to anticipate negative effects of losing the FIFA license and having real competition in the soccer gaming space in the years to come.
Gatorade is (finally) releasing its own version of a sugar-free electrolyte drink powder. I think this product will be a huge hit, especially with the rising tide of the sugar-free electrolyte beverage market as a whole. (As long as it tastes good!)
Ski gear company Flylow is launching its own buyback program, aiming to re-use and generate revenue from used gear. I’ve mentioned this in various articles and roundups, but I firmly believe more companies will employ programs like this. It’s fun to think about the secondary effects of this activity, but in general I think it’s a great way to keep consumers in your own product ecosystem and reduce the costs for new purchases (in theory, at least).
Outdoor gear brand X-Bionic is set to make its US debut with its TerraSkin footwear system. It seems like the company is trying to better integrate the sock, upper, and midsole into one complete package for optimal energy transfer and cushion, but I’m a bit skeptical about the benefits given the cost. I’m excited for reviews to start dropping though!
Milwaukee-based Huupe has officially launched its "Smart Hoop" basketball products. I would have absolutely killed to have one of the mini hoops in my bedroom in middle school. I’m curious about the staying power of these products and what the company sees as its beachhead market and customer type.
Some News
Some News shares select news stories from across the sports and design world.
Will professional soccer players go on strike later this year? The Spanish star Rodri believes it could happen, spurred on by a match schedule that is becoming more and more demanding of teams and players. In many ways, it’s somewhat ironic that great teams are forced to play more matches in tournaments like the Champions League, and it’s possible this wear and tear is starting to affect top players.
The Adidas Community Lab is expanding its sports tech startup accelerator to Toronto, Houston, and many other cities. With this program, Adidas is aiming to provide tangible assistance, and in some cases grant funding, to black and Latin founders in the sports innovation space. Honestly, I think it’s a very cool idea, and it would not surprise me if other sports companies followed suit with programs of their own!
The battle for taxpayer dollars to fund stadiums rages on in Illinois , AND in Manchester, England! Illinois, Chicago, and Manchester governments have all held firm in their vocal denial that public funds will be used directly to subsidize new stadiums for professional teams— likely heightened by a growing view that you’re just subsidizing investments for private equity and billionaires. I feel like I say it monthly at this point, but I’m extremely interested to see how this shakes out!
Initial renders and more detailed plans have been released for a $98M women's youth athletics campus outside Indianapolis. The city, and Indiana more broadly, is making a huge push to become a hub for sports technology and business, and investments like this lend credence to their early success. Hey, if Bristol, Connecticut can become the home of the biggest sports entertainment network in the country, why can’t Indianapolis become the national home for sports innovation?
Prolific and popular ultra-runner Camille Herron has been embroiled in a Wikipedia article-editing scandal, and it’s truly one for the ages. Camille and her husband were caught editing the pages of other top ultra-runners like Courtney Dauwalter and Killian Jornet to downplay their accomplishments, while simultaneously pumping up her own bio. After this was publicly discovered, she was dropped by her sponsor LuluLemon, and issued a non-apology on Instagram that has since been retracted. It’s a wild story that I’m sure will continue to develop.
French sports gambling startup Sorare is being taken to court by the UK government. The government’s Gambling Commission is alleging that the company provided unlicensed gambling products to consumers in the UK, which marks only the second lawsuit in the 20-year history of the commission. Maybe 2nd place isn’t a good target in this race…
Grab Bag
Grab Bag features interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
Fast Company took a deep dive into the history of skateboard design, and it’s an incredible visual compendium. If nothing else, this gets me overly excited for the release of Skate 4 by EA some time in the near future (fingers crossed, at least).
NPR released an interview covering Elton John's involvement in bringing a British soccer team back to life. I didn’t know this until very recently when I also saw a book on the topic, but Elton John actually purchased Watford Football Club in the 1970’s to save it from going under, and permanently relinquished his role as chairman in 2002!