🔊 Drake Star Drops Q3 Sports Tech Recap

📰 TOP STORY
Drake Star Releases Q3 Report & Projections For 2024 Sports Tech Ecosystem

 • Drake Star, a global investment bank, dropped its Q3 Sports Tech report which noted a surprisingly, high-growth, high-activity market. With over $10 billion in announced deal value in Q3, sports tech continues to outperform the broader markets in terms of deal activities and consolidation.

Here are some of the Q3 2023 key highlights:

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐚𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬:

• Artemis Group, Bernard Pinault family’s investment company, acquired a 56% stake in Creative Artists Agency at a $7.0 billion valuation

• Liberty Media acquired a 90% stake in a global provider of official ticket, hospitality, and travel experiences for many sports events incl. F1, Quintevents, for $282 million

• Flutter Entertainment acquired a 51% stake in MaxBet, a leading sports-betting operator in Serbia, for $149 million with an option to acquire the remaining 49% in 2029

• Playmaker, a sports and entertainment media platform, acquired by Better Collective for $54 million

• Ares Management Corporation acquired a majority stake in LiveBarn, a fully automated broadcast system live-streaming provider to amateur and youth sporting events, from existing investors

• Professional Fighters League announced the acquisition of Bellator MMA, a promotional company and media platform, from Paramount Global

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬:

• EGYM, a smart workout solutions company, raised a $225 million Series F round at a $600 million valuation led by Affinity Equity Partners

• Monumental Sports & Entertainment, one of the largest integrated sports and entertainment companies in the US, received a $200 million capital injection at a $4.05 billion valuation from Qatar Investment Authority

• Professional Fighters League, a mixed martial arts organization, received $100 million from SRJ Sports Investments, a Saudi PIF investment vehicle

• Gympass, the corporate fitness and wellness platform, raised an $85 million Series F round at a $2.4 billion valuation from EQT Group and Neuberger Berman

• Blast Motion, a wearable motion capture technology developer, according to the most recent SEC Filing raised $60 million of debt from undisclosed investors

• FIGUR8, the leading innovator in the measure of musculoskeletal health, raised $25 million in Series A1 financing from First Spark Ventures, DIGITX, and Phoenix Venture Partners

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬:

• Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund

• Avenue Capital Group

• The Raine Group: $760 million

• TXV Partners: $500 million

• Otro Capital: $100 million

• APEX Capital: $60 million

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬:

• Early to late-stage:

  • Will Ventures

  • Verance Capital

  • Play Ventures

• Seed stage:

  • Elysian Park Ventures

  • Eberg Capital

  • Courtside Ventures

Get the full report here.

💰 MONEY MOVES 
Ronaldo Backs EA Sports Rival

• Cristiano Ronaldo backs EA Sports FC rival UFL as part of a $40 million funding raise. A group of investors, including Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, have committed $40 million to the development of UFL, a new soccer video game that aims to provide an alternative to the multibillion-dollar EA Sports FC series (more here).

• $2.27 million in funding has been injected to train sports tech data scientists. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has been awarded two grants worth $2.27 million to train a cohort of sports data scientists to tackle new challenges faced by Australia's sports tech industry. The Australian sports tech industry generates up to $4.5 billion in revenue, with more than 600 companies that employ more than 10,000 people (more here).

• Belgian sports tech Raw Stadia raises $1.63 million to optimize the impact of playing fields on athlete performance. The new financing round brings together a group of investors including LRM, Noshaq, and LeanSquare, as well as football icon Jan Vertonghen and entrepreneur Bart Claes, CEO of JBC. Raw Stadia, founded in 2018 by Limburger Jan Stryckers and Reece Watson, provides pro sports teams with advanced technology to monitor and optimize the impact of their playing fields on athletes’ performance (more here).

• Urban Sports Club secures €95M investment for employee wellness expansion. The company offers 50+ sports activities across 11,000 venues. Norway-headquartered Verdane led the round with several existing investors including HV Capital, b2venture, and ProSiebenSat1 participating (more here).

• MPL acquires NFT marketplace Good Game Exchange for $12.75 million. The E-sports and online gaming platform has acquired the NFT marketplace Good Game Exchange’s protocol completely as it buys out existing investors’ tokens (more here).

• Automated content platform Allstar secures $12 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Drive Capital, a Columbus-based venture capital fund, and joins previous investors such as Mark Cuban, Studio VC, J-Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. Allstar.gg’s platform turns a player’s game data into videos that can be quickly shared across social media platforms (more here).

• Geolocation platform Rypplzz raises $3 million in seed funding led by KB Partners. Led by CEO Josh Pendrick, Rypplzz works for the connection between the digital and physical world with its patented spatial OS. By pinpointing device locations with an accuracy of 6 inches (including altitude), it surpasses GPS’s 10 to 20 feet precision (more here).

 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS & COLLABS
FIBA Is Building On Its Partnership With Genius Sports

• FIBA expands partnership with Genius Sports. With this expansion of the partnership, FIBA expects Genius Sports to provide computer vision technology and AI-powered capabilities like an automated player tracking system, to Leagues and National Federations around the world (more here).

• Sportradar Launches 'Future Of Tennis Betting' With ATP. Sportradar and Tennis Data Innovations, a specialist joint venture vehicle of ATP and ATP Media, have entered into a multi-year agreement providing the sports technology company with global data and streaming rights for betting, and media data rights, for all ATP Tour and ATP Challenger Tour events (more here).

• Ellipse signs a multi-year partnership with Racecourse Media Group. The partnership will see Ellipse’s data engineering and analytics specialists, combined with AI and machine learning, bring a new dimension to how fans consume and understand horse racing – the first project of its kind for the sport (more here).

• PGA Tour expands its partnership with Aon for 2024. The partnership with Aon will integrate the use of real-time analytics and capitalize on changes to the TOUR’s reimagined 2024 schedule to create more drama and insights for fans (more here).

• MOJO gets acquired and announces partnership with TeamSnap. TeamSnap, the leading provider of sports management software announced that it has acquired MOJO Sports, an innovative youth sports media platform that provides coaching instruction resources, sports team management tools, live video streaming, and multimedia content (more here).

• Toca Football adds to Midwest portfolio with the purchase of Quad Indoor Sports in Evanston. This strategic move is part of TOCA’s commitment to revolutionizing soccer training and ongoing Midwest expansion of indoor soccer training centers (more here).

🔊 OTHER HYPE
FIFA Drops NFTs With Chance To Win World Cup Tickets

• Orlando Magic will host its third annual innovation challenge in January. The weekend will offer developers, students, marketers, startup enthusiasts, graphic artists, and sports business professionals the opportunity to pitch new, innovative ideas and hear from some of the top minds in the sports technology field (more here).

• FIFA drops NFTs that offer chance at World Cup final tickets, moves to Polygon. An inaugural collection of 100 NFTs premiered on Dec. 15 and featured the chance to secure tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2026 final. In addition, 900 other digital collectibles will be issued on the Polygon network and OpenSea this month, comprising memorable moments from the tournament and digital versions of memorabilia (more here).

• Scientists say AI is emerging as a potential tool to aid athletes and beat drug tests. Using AI for drug discovery is no longer a pipedream. But how soon might AI be embraced by athletes looking for new ways to cheat (more here)?

• TGL, Japan sports betting bolster bullish long-term outlook. Scrum Ventures fund manager Michael Proman expects VC activity to bounce back in 2024 while watching developments beyond the coming 12 months (more here).

• With the Washington Capitals and Wizards moving to Virginia, owner Ted Leonsis pursues his vision of a $10 billion sports empire around Washington, D.C. The owner of multiple Washington, D.C.-area sports teams said he’s aiming to build “the world’s most valuable regional sports and entertainment company,” pegging the value at $10 billion to $15 billion, and seeing the potential for an IPO (more here).