Sports betting data provider IMG Arena has acquired controlling interest in Swedish computer vision company Signality . The investment will improve IMG Arena’s fan engagement offerings with advanced data from Signality’s AI software that analyzes video streams to track ball and player movement .
Endeavor-owned IMG Arena struck a deal in 2018 to become the PGA Tour’s exclusive seller of data to sportsbooks. The company also has betting data and livestreaming distribution deals with UFC, NASCAR , MLS, the NHL, ATP and the UK’s Football Association. Signality was founded in 2016 and has mostly worked within soccer, as it was a member of the UEFA Innovation Hub in 2019.
IMG Arena previously acquired ball-tracking technology FlightScope Services in April. Its move to acquire majority ownership in Signality is similar to previous acquisitions made by fellow betting data distributors Sportradar and Genius Sports. Sportradar acquired computer vision and analytics specialist Synergy Sports in April 2021, while Genius bought AI camera player-tracking leader Second Spectrum for $200 million in May 2021.
Charlotte Hornets forward Gordon Hayward is a new endorser of extended reality gaming startup Viture . The company’s Viture One smartglasses produce a 120-inch virtual screen to watch 3D movies or play video games by wirelessly connecting to a streaming service or gaming console.
Viture’s new video ad starts with Hayward playing video games on a PC in a home, but he then puts on Viture One’s glasses and connected neckband to continue gaming on the virtual display as he’s free to enter any room in the house or go outside. The glasses can connect over Bluetooth or USB to game controllers, keyboards and mice for a portable gaming experience.
Viture has raised more than $2.7 million on its Kickstarter campaign. Those who fund the campaign before May 25 will receive up to $150 off Viture One’s $549 MSRP once they launch in October. Hayward, an All-Star in 2017, is an avid gamer who previously invested in mobile esports org anization Tribe Gaming.
Fusion Sport, best known for its Smartabase athlete management system, has released the Human Performance Optimization Tech Stack, a market report of performance technologies.
The beta version of the HPO Tech Stack includes more than 300 products divided into seven categories: training prescription, load monitoring, recovery, performance testing & outcomes, medical, operations & front office, and data management & visualization. Those seven are then further broken down into 34 subcategories.
In a post on the company website, Fusion Sport explained that its goal was to “ share our team’s expertise at scale, provide thought leadership in the industry, and better serve the kind of organizations we help on a daily basis .” Fusion Sport is seeking industry feedback to improve its comprehensiveness and plans to release updated versions annually.
The Professional Fighters League completed a $30 million Series E equity round Thursday that included funding from former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez.
The investment will give the PFL more global reach and visibility and also allow it to launch its PPV Super Fight Division. The round was led by Waverly Capital, the venture capital company run by Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and Daniel Leff. Rodriguez and Leff congruently have become part of the PFL’s board of directors.
“I love the global reach of MMA,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “The PFL continues to build and innovate for fans, media, and fighters, and there is massive demand in the marketplace.”
The PFL, which is UFC's main rival and targeting an estimated global MMA audience of 550 million fans, is two months removed from partnering with white-label NFT platform creator Mercury to create a branded NFT market for the league. It has previous sponsorship deals with Sugar23, Socios and DraftKings.
English Premier League club Arsenal FC will host an academy tryout May 24 at Emirates Stadium in partnership with wearable player-tracking provider STATSports . Youth players will wear the company’s GPS-tracking vest, and Arsenal’s staff will monitor the data to identify potential academy-caliber players.
STATSports launched its Arsenal Edition GPS Performance Tracker last October. The wearable retails for $370, and it tracks 16 metrics such as a player’s total distance, max speeds, high-speed running distance, intensity and fatigue levels. The data is also stored on a user’s phone via the STATSports app for them to compare their performance to current Arsenal Academy players and those on the club’s Premier League squad.
Arsenal invited youth players to its home stadium for next week’s tryout after analyzing their data in the STATSports app, with some coming from Ireland and one from Prague. STATSports has a youth and pro-level deal with US Soccer and is partnered with top European clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Juventus and PSG.
Dapper Labs won the 2022 Sports Business Award for Best in Sports Technology for popularizing non-fungible tokens through its landmark NBA Top Shot product release. Many of the NFTs sold for astronomical sums, including a LeBron James dunk that netted $387,000. This year's award was co-presented by SportTechie.
Following the success of Top Shot, Dapper Labs struck partnerships with the NFL, UFC and more. The company raised more than $550 million last year at a $7.6 billion valuation.
“We want to thank our friends at the NBA, because they had a vision with us a long time ago when nobody knew what an NFT was, what Web3 was, what blockchain is,” Dapper Labs VP for basketball partnerships Juan De Jesus said in his acceptance speech.
Many of the core team members at Dapper Labs, including founder and CEO Roham Gharegozlou , had initially developed and released CryptoKitties , a blockchain-based game in late 2017. While that had some success, the crypto market turned down soon thereafter, so Dapper was building Top Shot during what head of partnerships Caty Tedman called “a dark stretch.”
“We were building in a period where there was some skepticism about crypto, where there's some skepticism about mainstream adoption of the technology, where there were a lot of people who wanted to be an arm's length from it,” she said in an interview.
Last spring, the headlines started po u ring in. To date, there have been 25 million sales across all their products.
“When the market picked up, it was just so exhilarating,” Tedman said. And there were so many things to do, because the product itself needed shoring up for the community that came in and participated in it. But it's always exciting to be part of something that feels like a movement and the concept of sports fans having this kind of autonomy or this kind of relationship with their investment in sports.”
Part of its appeal was its accessibility, too, as users could buy NFTs with a credit card as opposed to needing an Ethereum wallet.
“That was critical from day one,” De Jesus said later. “The team had worked on CryptoKitties a while ago, and they had they were familiar with the experience—they understood what worked, what didn't work. So they iterated and built something that they knew it was going to resonate and was going to be accessible.”
Dapper Labs and especially NBA Top Shot became synonymous with the NFT market and was embraced by the players themselves.
“I love that it resonates with [the athletes] as well,” Tedman said. “The concept of someone in a press conference saying ‘what I did tonight, that was a Top Shot’—that kind of thing is exactly what we hoped would happen, but it gives me goosebumps even today.”
Liverpool FC has expanded its deal with injury prediction company Zone7. The new two-year deal will see Zone7’s AI injury risk detection software expand beyond Liverpool’s top men’s team to also its women’s and under-23 clubs.
Liverpool’s English Premier League men’s club has used Zone7 since the start of its 2021-22 season. Zone7’s algorithms analyze a player’s in-game, training and sleep data from wearables, fitness assessments and medical profiles to produce specific injury risk calculations and individualized load management programs.
Silicon Valley-based Zone7 is used by soccer clubs across the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and MLS—as well as MLB, NFL and NBA teams. The company raised $8 million last year with funding from NBA star Kristaps Porzingis, among others.
US men’s national team soccer coach Gregg Berhalter unequivocally praised the new collective bargaining agreements reached by the US Soccer Federation with the men’s and women’s national teams. The deals grant the men’s and women’s players identical compensation for game appearances , pooled World Cup bonus money and equal distribution of broadcast and sponsorship revenue .
“ I think it's amazing ,” Berhalter said in his first comments about the CBAs, while appearing at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival on Wednesday morning. “ We set a marker for not only conditions in our country, but for the world of soccer, and then hopefully for the world of sport, and then hopefully for the world in general. And I think it's a really big step that we made, getting this done. I'm proud of both the men's and the women's teams for getting the deal done, proud of the Federation for being the flag bearer with this type of movement. ”
Among the other terms was a guarantee that US Soccer would provide equal quality venues and field surfaces and training resources. The federation’s announcement also noted improved conditions for player health and safet y and data privacy , although specifics were not immediately available.
“ I have three daughters myself, and they gr e w up and watched the women's national team, and they're amazed at the level that they perform at consistently ,” Berhalter said. “ And to believe that there's hope to do this as a profession, it creates an extra motivation to train those extra hours, to fight to keep progressing and improving. ”
Virtual reality ice hockey training startup Sense Arena has raised a $3 million investment round led by Prague-based J&T Ventures. Sense Arena already has partnerships with five NHL teams, and its new funding will fuel expansion of its VR training software into other sports .
Sense Arena is the cognitive training partner of the Arizona Coyotes, Las Vegas Golden Knights , LA Kings and New Jersey Devils . The Coyotes recently shared a video of injured players Lawson Crouse and Liam O’Brien wearing an Oculus VR headset installed with Sense Arena’s app so they could complete hockey drills in VR and sharpen their reaction skills as part of their rehab.
Former NHL defenseman Andrew Alberts , who had his nine-year career cut short due to a concussion, is now the director of player development at Sense Arena. The company is active in the youth hockey market in addition to partnerships with nine NCAA programs and more than 30 pro teams globally. Sense Arena plans to expand into swing sports such as baseball, softball and tennis as well as pursuing new virtual reality opportunities in the sports metaverse.
The US Air Force and Drone Racing League have renewed and expanded their partnership to accelerate the training of drone pilots and recruit new talent to become Airmen.
Together, the partners will create new content and immersive gaming experiences throughout the upcoming DRL 2022-23 season. Included in that are digital series with instructions on first-person view (FPV) drone flying as well as US Air Force Boneyard maps and skins in DRL SIM , the league’s simulator video game. On Wednesday, the DRL will share an update for its DRL Sim tryouts, in which gamers can vie for a chance to become professional drone pilots.
The DRL Arcade mobile game is staging a Military Appreciation Month Tournament and will grant prizes to the top 75 finishers in commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th year as a standalone military branch. The league is also honoring Cathyrine “Lilo” Armandie , Lt Col of the U.S. Air Force , in its #WomenTakingOff series.
Iowa Sports Turf is installing the GrassMax hybrid surface at Allianz Field, home to MLS club Minnesota United. The hybrid natural grass and synthetic system is already used at home stadiums for Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, West Ham and at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium, which will host 2022 World Cup matches.
Minnesota United expects its new pitch to be completed by the end of this month, and it will host the MLS All-Star Game on Aug. 10. The GrassMax hybrid stitch system has synthetic fibers to stabilize the root zone of the field to prevent divots and ensure a more level surface. The system is guaranteed to last at least 10 years and will especially help maintain Allianz Field during Minnesota’s colder months.
“The technology is proven, widely used in European leagues and very much the preferred surface for FIFA,” MNUFC head groundskeeper Ryan Moy said in a statement. “There are some core elements of this game that have evolved over time with a focus on elevating pitch performance and player safety.”