Geek Locker Roundup #35
April 18th, 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 joined the rest of the sports media world by digging into the back story of the Yankees’ new “torpedo bat.” This innovation seemingly came out of nowhere despite being used in MLB games last year, and prompts questions about what other types of basic equipment and process improvements might be available for teams to investigate. Often, these no-brainer optimizations come from asking seemingly stupid questions!
Recess #8: "Hats for Bats.... Keep Bats Warm"
Over the last couple weeks, the baseball world has been turned (a good lathe-based pun for any baseball bat manufacturers reading this) on its head. Last week, the New York Yankees hit three home runs on the first three pitches of the game— an MLB record and something you can only dream of achieving in a game like
We also rounded out the deep dive into the balance of luck and skill in sports. In particular, we studied how different groups like teams, leagues, and investors might be able to leverage information about how to increase or decrease the presence of luck in sport. Quite often, the strategies and tactics that teams employ already serve this end, even if it’s not truly intentional!
Luck & Skill in Modern Sports, Pt. 2
This is the 2nd part of a two-part series. Check out Part 1 below!
Over the next two weeks we’ll attempt to figure out exactly how many people have been to every MLB stadium in honor of the 2025 season kick-off. We’ll also examine how the initial learning curve and cost curve for getting into a new sport might affect its overall popularity with different age groups. For this second article, we’ll use my recent golf trip as a vehicle for examining what it means to be a beginner in a sport and how to navigate becoming entrenched in a new athletic hobby.
Stat of the Week
Two weeks ago, Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals broke Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal record by notching his 895th career goal. He accomplished this feat in 1,487 games played, which is an absurdly high amount of hockey games for a professional career. If he averaged ~20 minutes of ice time per game, this equates to ~496 hours of hockey played, or roughly 20.5 days of total play time. What might be even more insane is that despite scoring nearly 1,000 goals in his career so far, he’s not yet in the top-10 points scorers of all time!
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.
A Dallas investment group is reportedly eyeballing the creation of a new TGL franchise for $77M. This implies the value of a franchise is ~1% of the Boston Celtics, who recently sold for $6.1B. It might sound absurd, but I think that might even be slightly too high in my estimation, though I’m sure the value has increased since the incredible Masters this year.
Sports streaming company FloSports has raised a $100M Series D funding round. For a digital streaming platform I would assume much of this cash will be funneled towards securing broadcast rights for new sports and events. My only hope is that they fix their customer service in the process… after my last poor experience with them prompted me to go find their D+ rating on the Better Business Bureau…
Ryan Smith is launching a sports technology investment fund called Halo Experience Company with a ceiling of $1 Billion. The Utah Jazz and Hockey Club owner will focus on funding ~24 sports and entertainment startups through multiple rounds of funding.
Callaway Brands has sold Jack Wolfskin to Anta Sports for $290M. Anta Sports is the parent company of recently-IPO’d Amer Sports and owns a wide variety of brands including Arc’Teryx and Salomon. I think this move makes sense for both parties involved as Callaway continues to refine its focus on golf products and experiences.
Startup Signing Day Sports is purportedly considering acquisition of a crypto infrastructure company BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure. As opposed to the previous headline, this one is a head scratcher. Signing Day is currently a scouting and recruiting platform, so the acquisition of a cryptocurrency mining company seems a bit off-piste for them…
UK-based PoolHouse has raised a whopping $34M Seed Round. The company run by the team that launched Top Golf is looking to create a new sports bar franchise with a unique billiards experience. It seems like the goal is to marry Buffalo Wild Wings and PingPod in one company, which might just be a concept that succeeds!
OES, Inc. has been acquired by private equity fund Reichmann Sedal Capital. This headline initially meant nothing to me until I discovered that OES actually supplies the in-game and in-arena timing technology for most pro sports leagues in North America, including the NFL, NHL, and NBA. I don’t know how much upside exists in this market, but clearly Reichmann thinks some exists!
New Releases
New sports products and major features that are hitting the market.
Adidas might be angling to enter the broader outdoor sports market in the ski gear segment with its new Terrex 3L C-Knit jacket. Anecdotally, Adidas seems to be slowly gaining momentum with the Terrex brand, and I could see them funneling increased resources into the outdoor space more broadly if they continue their success!
La Sportiva has released a new bouldering shoe designed with inputs from Adam Ondra. If you haven’t seen some of his YouTube videos, I highly recommend you give them a watch— it will make you feel physically inferior in pretty much every regard.
The North Face is set to launch its newest trail shoes, the Vectiv Enduris 4 and Pro 3. I absolutely love my Vectiv Enduris trail shoes for shorter trail runs, but I do think their lack of stability can be a bit of a drawback on longer runs or if you’re looking for a hybrid trail running/hiking shoe.
The paid subscription model is reaching the sports fitness tracking segment with Polar entering the fray. I… am not super pleased about this trend, which might be a relatively common sentiment. After Strava began to put up walls around its premium features and inter-brand interfaces, I think it was only a matter of time until others followed suit unfortunately.
Some News
Select news stories from across the sports and design world.
The NFL will implement Sony's Hawk-Eye tracking system to call 1st downs starting next season. It’s possible that they will be fusing the visual data from the Hawk-Eye system with their UWB-based ball tracking system, which is probably a good idea to increase accuracy since they estimated just 4 years ago they could only achieve an accuracy of ±6”. If this is anything like offside tech in soccer, it will not be as accurate as fans would like it to be.
Puma has hired an ex-Adidas exec to be its new CEO after just 2.5 years of the previous leader. The company’s value is down over 80% from its recent high in 2021, so a series of dramatic moves to try to restore the company are to be expected, if Nike was an initial canary in the coalmine.
The city of Baltimore has sued both FanDuel and DraftKings for violating consumer protection regulations. It really, really feels like we’re starting to reach the point at which the sports gambling market as a whole begins to plateau in terms of benefit to states and cities. I would be a bit skittish about the long-term prospects of sports-specific gambling companies.
The PGA has reportedly rejected a $1.5B investment offer from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PiF). This seems like it’s probably a good call from the PGA for the time being as they continue to struggle for control of the overall golfing marketplace. It’s kind of wild that LIV golf launched four years ago at this point— golf has been fragmented for quite a while.
As the first of a trio of stories, the NWSL may continue its rapid expansion, with an ultimate goal of supporting 30 teams in North America. Unfortunately, the recently announced Denver team is facing a familiar story, with the city of Denver being skeptical about funding $70M for a new stadium. However, broad momentum for women’s soccer has continued, with Kynisca founder Michele Kang is investing $25M in US Soccer. It’s been an up and down month for North American soccer!
The total prize pool for this year's Esports World Cup will reach $70M total. Slowly but surely, esports have continued to grow, even folding in new sports like Chess, so it will be interesting to see if this expansion can sustain for the next few years.
Grab Bag
Interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
Want to see some cool baseball jerseys? This breakdown of some of the best NCAA kits reinforced for me that purple is an underrated color.
The first ever robot-on-robot boxing match will take place some time in May. The robotics company Unitree will have two of its humanoid robots square off in the ring, in what has the potential yo be one of the funniest events of the year. It will be interesting to see how well they do!