Geek Locker Roundup #33
March 21st, 2025
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 covered two equally controversial topics: the encroachment of private equity into the world of youth sports, and the gamification of virtual workout products like Zwift. Youth sports is quickly becoming a major focus for all types of startup companies, non-profits, and investors. There are some major benefits and drawbacks to this increased focus, and it will be interesting to see how quickly the landscape changes in the years to come. If nothing else, I expect it to change more dramatically than the virtual workout industry, which seems to be evolving at a relatively slow pace.
The Metaphorical Eye of Sauron Sets its Sights on Youth Sports
Somehow it feels like over a decade has passed since a landmark ruling broke the dam that prevented college athletes from being able to use their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) to make money. In reality, it’s only been four years since NIL payments became legal, and the amount of money that has since flooded into the NCAA to the athletes, the colle…
Recess #6: Cycling Clear of the Uncanny Valley
Update 3/13/25: A reader informed me that Zwift just released their new completionism challenge for the first time in multiple years last week! I’ve left my commentary about my frustration in place to honor the years of waiting, but I need to get better at updating my apps…
Next week, I’ll be kicking of a (probable) series of articles reflecting on my mechanical engineering undergrad thesis, which somehow is focused on the balance of luck and skill in professional League of Legends. It’s not every day that you have an advisor who lets you stray so far from the typical thesis topic, and it’s been long enough that I wanted to revisit some of the topics covered and look at the current balance of chance and skill in the landscape of sports. In particular, I’m interested to tie some insights to the current trend of PE/VC funds investing in leagues and individual teams.
After a teaser last week, we’ll also try to figure out what the right number of porta-potties is for a marathon or other event. The Boston Marathon is about a month away, and if I know anything from my relatively limited road race experience, it’s that there are never enough of them at most events, especially music festivals. I’m excited to drop off my wife at the start line to see if we nailed the estimate for number of porta-potties at the event!
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
Updates about major sports tech company transactions.
Robotic massage startup Aescape has raised an additional $83M in funding. They are partnering with Equinox to bring their product to more (admittedly high-end) locations around the US, and have now raised a total of $128M. I would love to know what types of safety and sensing features these robots have— it’s probably quite an interesting engineering problem to tackle!
The TKO Group followed it up by announcing a joint venture with Saudi Arabia to enter the world of boxing. The shockwaves are already being felt across the whole combat sport industry, and it will be interesting to see if they can actualize a master plan to consolidate the relatively disparate structure of the sport. As with all pursuits, there are likely to be some major benefits and drawbacks to their new approach. TKO also continued its aggressive surge by folding in more of the sports assets from its parent company, the Endeavor Group, nearly cementing their status as a dominant global sports governance company.
Monarch Collective has raised an additional $100M to reach $250M total for investment in women's sports. The fund is going to be distributed as investment into sports teams, leagues, and media rights for women’s sports, and they’ll definitely face some stiff competition in these areas with so much private equity money flowing into these areas more broadly already! It is certainly becoming a crowded investment market, and I’m starting to get nervous a bubble might be starting to form…
Fanatics and Ticketmaster are exploring collaborations for cross-platform activity and marketing. I’m not sure that you could hand-pick two less popular sports-related brands to partner up together, but reality is often more unbelievable than fiction, so here we are! Fans will now be able to purchase tickets through Fanatics as they pursue the goal of becoming a one-stop-shop for every single sports-related purchase.
Hudl has continued their torrential growth with an acquisition of FastModel Sports. FastModel provides semi-automated scouting and analysis tools for basketball and ice hockey, so the acquisition is a strong compliment to Hudl’s existing dominance in the youth football space.
New Releases
New sports products and major features that are hitting the market.
Gym equipment company Aviron has launched a new treadmill with gamified and virtual experiences. Slowly but surely, Zwift, Peloton, and other giants are starting to face some competition, especially in the more commercially-focused areas like recreation equipment in gyms. It will be interesting to see if the whole industry becomes stove-piped, or begins to consolidate among a couple brands.
Salomon has released a new version of its uber-popular Advanced Skin running vest. To be honest, it’s difficult to tell what exactly has been updated in a major way from the last release, but if it’s not broken, no need to fix it!
FanDuel is launching an AI chatbot for the bettors using the app. This feels like a move spurred on by fear of falling behind in the generative AI race, but I don’t quite see what value this provides for actual users, apart from maybe telling me that the 10-leg parlays I’m laying aren’t worth it…
Sportico and YES Network have teamed up to launch a Sports Business TV Series. More future competition for me when The Geek Locker TV series launches on CNBC in 2034!
Omega has released its first special edition watch for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics. If you like gold watches, this might be one to get! I do wish they got a bit more creative with these types of special editions, but I’ll take what I can get (proverbially speaking, there’s no way I will be affording this watch).
Some News
Select news stories from across the sports and design world.
The NHL has deployed a custom app for referees to get on-ice info and alerts live about the game. It’s cool to see this type of somewhat subdued custom app design that has extremely practical uses. I wonder if they’ll release a product for refs at other levels more broadly.
The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) has announced a paid maternity leave program funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. It’s a slightly funny match for this type of program, but there’s no doubt that the creation of these types of programs is great for the sport overall!
Online gear marketplace Sendy closed in on 1.5M site visitors in 2024. I didn’t know Sendy existed before this week, and that might be a good thing for my wallet— even after 15 seconds of scrolling, I’m already considering taking up snowboarding.
A 10% in the SF Giants has been sold to private equity fund Sixth Street. Slowly but surely, the prestige of owning a pro sports team is starting to erode AND the dream of having publicly-traded teams in every league is becoming more of a possibility.
ESPN BET seems like it might be on some of its last legs, despite the continued growth of the sports betting market. The sports book has struggled to gain traction against the major players like FanDuel and DraftKings, and even pales in comparison to the user base of BetMGM and other minor players. I am not sure the joint venture between ESPN and Penn Entertainment has long to live.
Startup GoRout has begun piloting their wearable in-sports communication devices in NCAA football. This type of larger on-wrist screen has a ton of applications from football, to diving, to back country skiing. I firmly believe we’ll start to see wrist-based screens the size of an iPod Touch in a lot of specialized applications in the next few years.
FIFA revealed a whopping $1B prize pool for the 2025 Club World Cup event. The event will theoretically generate ~$2B in revenue, and this might be part of a larger overall plan to make the Club World Cup a larger centerpiece in the overall FIFA circuit.
Grab Bag
Interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
The MLB is launching limited-run apparel collaborations with Takashi Murakami and the designs are awesome. I think that leagues and teams should lean a bit more into special/limited edition gear without overdoing it, especially if it yields designs like these.
The LA Lakers won the “Best Trade” award from the Sloan Analytics Conference for the Luka Doncic acquisition. I didn’t know this award existed, and it’s funny that this implies the team on the other side of the trade (the Mavericks), effectively receives the “Worse Trade” award.