Geek Locker Roundup #36
May 2nd, 2025 (May the 2nd be with you)
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 delved into my philosophical battle against my own future with the sport of golf. I examined the skill-cost-enjoyment curves for beginners in a variety new sports, and tried to figure out how much I should commit myself to a new hobby as expensive and time consuming as golf. The overall process and article was a personal success by saving me the short-term cost of getting clubs and trying to play more— I’m simply having too much fun at my skill level to try to get much better at the moment.
Time is Money is More Enjoyment?
The first weekend in April earlier this month, I made my first trip to the state of Texas for a reason even I would have doubted even last year: three days of non-stop golf (and more importantly a mini reunion with friends from undegrad). In three days, we played more holes of golf than I probably have in the rest of my life combined— a total of four 18…
I also went through the fun exercise of estimating how many MLB fans have actually been to every stadium in the US and Canada. I think I landed on a relatively realistic answer to this question, but it’s always astonishing how quickly to me a large number like 72 Million baseball fans can quickly get whittled down with some even modest fractions. It’s the power of math!
Recess #9: Gotta Catch (at) 'Em All!
Back before I migrated all my old blog posts to Substack last year, I wrote an article estimating how many people had been to every state in the United States. This topic recently popped back into my head as I made my first visit to Texas for a weekend of golfing (more on this in the next long-form article). During the trip, I ended up at the Texas Rang…
Next week, I’ll be airing my grievances about the 2025 Boston Marathon Expo after giving myself a couple weeks to come down from the event. It was an extremely disappointing expo that featured more financial partners than gear brands (from what I could tell). On the flip side, nothing cheers me up more than giant screens, and in a slightly longer article, we’ll take a look at the history of the Jumbotron and figure out how it fits into the modern stadium and arena experience. It should be a fun pair of articles to write!
In lieu of a Stat of the Week, I wanted to share a rare (for now) Geek Locker update! I have created a new page on my website that consolidates the key sports technology news I use to assemble this roundup. The news will update daily and can be pulled at any time. I will still post the bi-weekly roundups with the most important news items, but if you can’t wait that long for your fill of sports innovation content, I highly recommend following the news on the site! Eventually I will begin to fold in more advanced features like more detailed investment trackers and trending technology highlights, but for now I will stick to the basic newsfeed for those who enjoy it.
Please provide any feedback on the format or what you’d like to see!
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.
Fan-funding NIL platform Fanstake has raised a $6.25M Seed Round. The company lets anyone donate to an NIL fund to keep athletes at a specific school, and I am personally not a big fan of the business model and what it means for the overall NIL industry, but it definitely could do very well!
Dave Checketts and the Eccles family will create a new PE Fund set to invest $1.2B in various sports industries. I keep waiting to see a slow-down in the quantity and size of sport-centric investment funds being created, and I have yet to detect one. The market is as bullish as ever!
ALT Sports Data has raised $5M in a Seed Round to improve betting for niche sports like F1 and the X-Games. This company really feels like one that will get acquired by a large sports gambling platform some time in the next few years once they have early success.
Miller Sports has acquired Real Salt Lake, Utah Royals FC, and their associated infrastructure for an estimated $600M. You really have to love a sport and a city to purchase a professional sports team, so hopefully the owners can inject some new life into the fan-bases and the leagues of these teams in the MLS and NWSL!
Strava has acquired the running training plan platform Runna. The platform continues to build out its premium feature sets, and it will be very interesting to see how much Runna gets integrated and utilized by Strava-ers.
New Releases
New sports products and major features that are hitting the market.
Lululemon is teaming up with the PWHL to launch a new apparel line. I was unfortunately underwhelmed by the Lulu-NHL collaboration earlier this season, but this PWHL line seems to have some more appeal!
Nike and the NFL are teaming up to release new "Rivalries" jerseys and gear for future seasons. I am a big fan on custom or limited-run jerseys for pro teams, and with Nike’s big push for focus on performance sport, this collaboration seems like a no-brainer. I just hope they look good!
NNormal has released a trail running shoe with a unique swappable midsole— the first of its kind. I think this is a super cool idea and I am extremely eager to try a pair of these at some point in the future. It will be fascinating to read future reviews and see how they hold up over time.
Puma has launched what it claims is the most efficient running shoe by over a 3% margin. Unfortunately, but surprisingly, the Boston Marathon was subsequently won by athletes in Under Armor and Asics shoes after this announcement, but I am curious to hear more about their performance once more athletes put them to the test.
Genius Sports has launched a 3D animated replay system. The system will be added to its Performance Studio so coaches can replay events from live games in animated space with their players as a coaching tool. I do wonder how much EA Sports will end up producing similar products with their recent acquisition of the TRACAB system from Chyron Hego!
Some News
Select news stories from across the sports and design world.
ASU, LEAD Venture, and GoDaddy have created the SPORTx Accelerator program at ASU. It’s extremely exciting to see more entrepreneurship sports-related programs at universities and I hope they have a great inaugural class in the accelerator!
The first round of the NFL draft averaged an astonishing 13 million viewers last weekend. This event really has become must-see television and huge props to the people inside the league and its broadcasting partners that have upgraded this media-centric event so quickly.
Cryptocurrency firm Tether is now the 2nd-largest shareholder in Serie A team Juventes (somehow). I don’t think I fully understand the cryptocurrency world anymore. What is a company? What is a currency?
Faith Kipyegon will attempt to be the first woman to run a sub-4:00 mile with help from Nike. They’ll look to replicate the success of Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-2:00 marathon from 2019, though on a much shorter time frame, and my sense is that most runners are skeptical it will be done on the first attempt, which happened to Kipchoge too!
The NCAA has approved a new rule to allow colleges to pay players directly (pending congressional settlement). The NCAA as a whole feels like a governing body that is changing too quickly for its own good right now… But unrelatedly, they are also adding stricter rules around faking of injuries during football games (and more leagues should adopt it).
Grab Bag
Interesting or useful sports innovation and product design resources, ranging from books and websites to individual graphics.
Get a quick overview of three sports tech startups making broadcasts more accessible to blind fans. It’s not often that Wired makes an appearance in the sports world, so I had to highlight them!
Is the hot dog making a major comeback via Charlotte startup Gleezy? I am admittedly not the biggest hot dog fan, but every once in a while when it’s the middle of the summer, a grilled hot dog hits the spot.