Geek Locker Roundup #27
December 27th, 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!
In the final article of 2024, we took an initial dive into the world of publicly traded sports companies. I was shocked by the quantity and variety of public sports teams, venue management companies, data analytics companies, and even athlete-tracking hardware companies available across North American and European markets. Perhaps most surprising to me, though, was the quantity of individual sports gear companies that are rolled up into massive public conglomerates. Brands like Arc’teryx, North Face, Vans, Saucony, and many others all sit underneath massive multi-national corporate umbrellas— I think they may intentionally distance themselves from their parent companies to keep a grassroots appearance!
The Present and Future of Publicly-Traded Sports Companies, Part 1/2
Obligatory: This article is not financial advice and is to be used for entertainment/educational purposes only.
Next week we’ll be rounding out the overview of publicly-traded sports companies by taking a deep dive into individual sports teams. We’ll also explore why no professional leagues have yet gone public, and make some predictions about the future of publicly-traded sports companies. If general industry sentiment and the growing creep of private equity into the world of sports are any indication, I would imagine that we start to see many more sports teams and broader sports-related companies IPO in the years to come. Will that be a good thing? Only time will tell…
Stat of the Week | Looking Ahead to 2025
2024 is almost in the books! This year, The Geek Locker Substack launched, and (including this roundup) published a total of 26 articles and 26 roundups, each on a bi-weekly cadence. Looking back, I’m extremely happy with the range of topics covered, the increasing quality in the content itself, and the coverage of topical sports tech news. Alternating between roundups and articles provided time to publish both better articles and a more comprehensive overview of the news.
For 2025 I’ll be focusing on keeping this same publishing structure, with some additions and small tweaks included:
Covering key news in more depth. In 2025, I’m going to be blending the article and roundup formats into short articles about key sports tech news the day that it breaks— somewhat of a Geek Locker Flash News (final name TBD). To keep up with headlines, these will be written relatively quickly, so will be shorter in length than the bi-weekly articles, and will cover the technical innovations and broader impacts associated with the news. My goal is to publish roughly 1 per week, but it will depend on the relatively erratic timing of key events and releases!
Collaborating more. In 2024, I collaborated with one co-author (Leo Fondriest), and I want to triple this number in 2025— to publish articles with at least three other people. It was a fun and motivating to collaborate on the articles, and who knows, maybe someone else will independently write and publish an article in 2025… if you have a topic you’d like to write about, please let me know!
Returning to engineering projects. I have yet to finalize what the cadence for these projects will look like, but I am eager to fold in additional technical and engineering projects. A great example is the article about how to improve the Guardian Cap. The projects will likely involve different pieces of the product development process, ranging from market exploration and ideation through prototyping and analysis. I hope they serve as a great entry point into more technical topics, and provide content not available elsewhere.
For 2025, I have yet to establish a final free-vs-paid subscription plan. However, if this year has shown me anything, I’m inclined to leave content free as much as possible. I will likely leave articles older than 2+ years in the archive on a paid subscription as this year continues to generate a larger pipeline of content, but I think it’s likely most new articles will remain free. With that said, if the goals for this newsletter shift, or I’m publishing enough content to warrant paid content, things may change, but you’ll have advanced notice. In the meantime, I will likely leave the paid subscription tier open for both archive access, and in case anyone would like to support the work on its own— I am extremely thankful for those who have supported this year at the launch of the newsletter!
Here’s to a great new year!
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.
Athlete safety and insurance company Players Health has closed a $60M Series C. I expect this company will 1) be very successful because future earnings insurance is critical for ascending and pro athletes, and 2) will have fierce competition in the future since this service could end up being a commodity like other types of insurance. I would love to know how much of the capital raised is anticipated to go to athlete payouts for claims, and more broadly how fundraising an insurance company looks!
Tony Romo has joined the investor list for Light Helmets, on the verge of completing a $10M Series A. It’s not entirely clear to me what sets their helmets apart from the rest of the market, but it can’t hurt to have more safety equipment suppliers and competition!
Consumer gym and fitness studio software company Bsport has finalized a $30MM Series B. The company will use the funds to expand out from Europe to North America and Asia, aiming to capture as much market share of gyms, yoga/pilates studios, and other fitness businesses that have memberships.
Everyday gambling app Lucra has finalized a $10M funding round. The company has two major thrusts its looking to expand with the funding— a consumer-facing side bet app (e.g. betting on a round of golf or ping pong with your friends), and a B2B service to provide gambling that provides this same infrastructure to entertainment companies like Dave & Buster’s. Very broadly, the proliferation of gambling and lottery apps is somewhat concerning, so it will be interesting to see if this company faces any regulatory roadblocks.
Baller League, a 6v6 soccer tournament league has raised $25M to expand beyond Germany in 2025. The league is leaning very heavily into marketing through UK- and US-based influencers, and if they can nail their distribution strategy as they expand, they might become a hit with younger audiences.
The 3v3 women's basketball league Unrivaled has officially closed its $28M Series A. The league has been in the headlines throughout the summer and fall as they’ve finalized their funding, so I’m excited they’ve wrapped up, and to see the league in action in the new year!
Automated broadcast startup Spiideo has acquired the optical tracking company Signality. Spiideo has become a sports tech startup to keep tabs on— despite being founded over a decade ago, it seems like they are hitting their stride in available capital and progress in the industry.
ESPN and Sony are teaming up for the first live-animated NBA game this Christmas. I think these simulcasts are great, and leveraging the Disney IP for this broadcast should lead to some great content.
DAZN continues its race to global broadcast dominance with its acquisition of Foxtel. From a vantage point in the US, it seems like DAZN’s rise has flown under the radar, but I am sure within the broadcast industry and abroad their rise has been quite loud.
New Releases
New Releases shows off new products and features that are hitting the market.
Disney+ has incorporated ESPN into its streaming platform. It sounds like the app will launch with very limited features within Disney+ to start, but will gradually ramp up its presence on the platform.
A22 has unveiled plans to launch the Unify League, a spiritual successor to the failed Super League. This league will be far more encompassing than the initial Super League proposal, and may feature up to 96 European clubs. It will be interesting to see if FIFA and UEFA let it launch!
Marucci Sports is launching the first baseball and softball cleat to use the BOA system. I’m a huge believer in BOA, and I think their expansion into more general sport footwear from their base of bike shoes and ski/snowboard boots has been inevitable for some time.
Team USA has teamed up with Illumination to launch branded Minions national team gear. Death, taxes, and the Minions making co-branded products— the three inevitabilities in life!
Some News
Some News shares select news stories from across the sports and design world.
Ski tourism guide Somewhere2Ski has released its updated site design. S2S is in the process of bootstrapping their company launch, and I wanted to highlight it because it’s such a great idea for a company— navigating a new ski resort and town without any prior experience or a local can be extremely daunting!
Saudi Arabia has officially been announced as the 2034 World Cup host. The selection has been met with some consternation, but should be unsurprising for anyone who has followed sports in the last decade
Chess is set to join the Esports World Cup lineup in 2025 with a prize pool of $1.5M. As someone who watches too much chess coverage, particularly for Rapid and Blitz events, I think this is a great inclusion! Chess seems to be gaining strong momentum for a major resurgence, and this will no doubt help promote the game!
The recent Usyk vs. Fury fight featured a fourth non-voting "AI Judge" for the first time. Reactions before and after the fight were relatively mixed from the public, and details about the actual function of the judge are lacking, but it does signal a desire to promote additional transparency in boxing judging and broadcasting.
Riot's Valorant Champions' Tour generated $78.4M in revenue sharing for its teams. Riot continues to assert its dominance in the esports scene, built upon the foundational global popularity of League of Legends. Esports might be in the middle of a strong resurgence!
Manchester City and Puma are teaming up for an AI-based kit design challenge. I don’t know why they didn’t just have a human-based kit design challenge… this seems like a needlessly poor decision.
Helping to propel a successful season, the Texas NIL fund Texas One Fund has spend over $13M this year. The spending spree on major sports in the NCAA is definitely starting to spiral out of control. I think it might be a matter of time until we start to see a negative effect on the number of younger players going pro, particularly in less popular sports.
The MLS Cup has seen a dramatic decrease in viewership year over year. It’s possible that the decline is due to greater conflict with other programming this year, but at the very least it doesn’t show well for Apple, who is particularly tight-lipped about MLS viewership— their first major investment in the sports broadcast space.
Grab Bag
Grab Bag features interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
The NFL has received criticism for the quality of play this season. The NBA has also received a lot more vocal criticism of its play this year, so I am curious how either or both leagues react next season. The MLB seems to be considering some more dramatic rules changes, so the NFL and NBA may follow suit!
Yahoo tech highlighted their love of the at-home fitness Hydrow Core Rower. Full disclosure, I have never used a Hydrow machine despite spending thousands of hours on a Concept2 erg. However, the highlight of a less “smart” piece of tech is great! And it’s fun to watch them film on the Charles in the fall.