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 we kicked off a two-part article series about how luck and skill affect the outcomes of matches in different sports, with an initial dive into the underlying mechanics and an overview of which major sports are more luck-driven than others.
More importantly, though, we tried to calculate the number of porta-potties that are required for the start line of a marathon or other race. Every single race I’ve ever been to has some element of bathroom chaos as the start time approaches, and I think this might be easily avoided (if there is enough local supply of porta-potties for race organizers).
Next week we’ll be continuing the deep dive on luck and skill in sports, with a particular focus on how we can actually use information about their balance in specific sports. I think this will be quite an interesting investigation, and we’ll also talk in a bit more detail about the Yankees’ new “torpedo bat” that has taken the baseball world by storm. The new bat design is based on some extremely simple insights about where the ball contacts the bat, and has opened the door to more team-specific innovations that are quite exciting!
As always, the Recess Article will be a bit more tongue-in-cheek than the normal programming, and I will likely maintain the cadence of spreading out and alternating article type on a weekly basis. It’s worked much better for my own time availability, and hopefully it provides some more frequent and interesting content! I am eager to continue growing the reach of this newsletter through the year, so any and all feedback is welcome.
Stat of the Week
Down the road from me in Boston, the US figure skating team took the World Championships by storm, with 20-year old Ilia Malinin tying the record for the most quadruple-spin jumps performed in a single routine, with six! He also did a back flip on skates, which I didn’t know was even possible or legal. I definitely recommend watching the performance below, because it’s absolutely electric, and might give a bit of a teaser for the upcoming winter Olympics!
It was a busy week for sports tech and business news, so the snippets below are slightly shorter than normal. 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.
The Boston Celtics have been sold to Bill Chisholm for a staggering $6.1B! It marks the largest single team sale ever in the US, and it will be interesting to see if any major changes impact the organization. Honestly, given recent success, this was a great time to sell.
Golf media and marketing company Good Good Golf has raised $45M in an unnamed funding round. The investment included funds from Peyton Manning and Creator Sports Capital, for whom this was their inaugural investment.
Boxing startup STRIKR has reportedly raised $50M in an initial funding round. STRIKR seeks to automate punch/impact tracking, and will aim to create a whole new match paradigm for boxing more broadly.
Fantasy Sports startup Underdog has raised $70M in a Series C that has valued the company at $1.2B. Fantasy sports and sports gambling seem to have limitless potential right now!
Livestreaming startup Playback has raised $22M in an unspecified funding round. Being the “Twitch of Sports” is quite a lofty goal, but I whole-heartedly believe that co-streaming and live reacting to sporting events is a major untapped market.
ESPN appears to be on the cusp of acquiring NFL Media for ~$2B. I personally think releasing control of the production company from within their business would be a mistake by the NFL, but it’s difficult to turn down a $2B offer for anything.
SportRadar has acquired the betting rights portfolio of IMG Arena, owned by Endeavor Group, for $250M. The betting rights include events like tennis majors, MLS games, and a huge swath of pro golf events under the PGA. Sport Radar’s stock has certainly received a bump from the news.
New Releases
New sports products and major features that are hitting the market.
J.Crew is teaming up with the US Ski and Snowboard teams to create a lifestyle apparel and gear line. Not the partnership I would have envisioned, but hopefully the apparel looks great!
MyWhoosh has unveiled a huge set of new features as part of their 4.0 release to compete with Zwift in the virtual cycling war. The launch includes virtual shifting, the ability to import GPX files into a virtual workout, and many quality of life improvements.
Steph Curry and Michelle Obama have teamed up to launch Pelzi, a new sports drink brand. I was recently struck by how many brands now compete with the likes of Gatorade and Powerade in the gas station cooler aisle— the market is quite crowded!
Catapult Sports is launching its newest team-sports athlete tracker, the Vector 8. Among the benefits of the new system, improved accuracy is not mentioned, so it will be interesting to see how this stacks up against other player-tracking technology being developed.
The first-ever Tennis Esports Championship will take place in Las Vegas in September. All the matches will take place in a virtual reality (VR) game, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t intrigued to see this.
Some News
Select news stories from across the sports and design world.
The UFC might be heading towards an exclusive $1B broadcast deal with Netflix. I am a bit skeptical this will unfold exactly as described, but there’s no doubt that the push for online/digital broadcasting is starting to overtake linear broadcast to TV.
The New York Yankees' "torpedo bat" design has taken the sports world by storm. There’s so much discourse about this topic (and I’ll add mine next week), but it really proves how much hardware-based innovation is left out there for individual teams to discover!
The Philadelphia Phillies are suing one of their analytics platform providers to prevent them from sharing proprietary data. This is a fascinating legal and technical situation— I hope the Phillies’ data stays private, but it would be more interesting if it got shared…
The NHL has leverages SAP to provide hockey teams with a single home for contract and trade info. Did teams have to build their own infrastructure to try to track player contract info and trade details prior to this? That seems somewhat alarming.
Paris Saint-Germain has launched its own sports tech accelerator program, STATION F. Simultaneously, Tech Stars is shutting down its sports technology focused incubator in Indianapolis, which is quite a bummer and might signal a slowing of Indiana’s sports tech scene.
The NFL has partnered with Under Armor as its official glove and footwear partner. It’s an interesting partnership that I don’t think actually means much in the grand scheme for competitors like Nike and New Balance, but it’s always good to have some more competition!
Grab Bag
Interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
Researchers from MIT have sought to quantify the value of investment in analytics by NBA teams. They found that each analyst adds ~1.25 wins per season, worth roughly $9M to a team base on the average roster. Of course there are incremental decreases when adding your 100th or 10,000th analyst, but it’s quite an interesting discovery that will certainly drive higher investment by teams.
Startup company ODIN is looking to use VR to help detect concussions for athletes. VR and AR systems are already set up to track eye movement and reactions better than any other device, so this type of product seems like a no-brainer if teams are actually open to better concussion testing!
The Acquired podcast presented the longest audio-based deep dive on the India Premier League (Cricket) you can possibly imagine. It’s an absolutely fascinating story with a ton of twists and turns that has gotten me hyped to watch some Cricket moving forward (time zone allowing).