🔊 Global Sports Investment Firm Buys Into Top Soccer Club

📰 TOP STORIES
FSG Sells Minority Stake In Liverpool FC To Dynasty Equity For Between $100 To $200 Million

• Global sports investment firm Dynasty Equity has completed a strategic common equity minority investment in Liverpool FC. Dynasty Equity recently bought a minority stake in the Premier League football club which is owned by Fenway Sports Group for somewhere between $100-$200 million. The firm is focused on acquiring minority interests in sports franchises, media, tech, and other related assets and rights (more here).

• Genius Sports launches BetVision, an immersive sports betting experience including NFL live game video. This is the world’s first immersive sports wagering experience that brings live streams together with integrated bet slips, statistical insights, and real-time augmentations within a single interactive player (more here).

• Utah Jazz drop their new streaming service, Jazz+. This week, the team announced Jazz+, a direct-to-consumer streaming platform that will feature live games, full-length replays, and a content library (more here).

💰 MONEY MOVES 
The Most Valuable NBA Team Ever?

• Sports tech company TeachMe.To raises $2 million to connect beginner athletes with local coaches. The sports coaching platform for beginner athletes secured $2 million in seed funding which will be used to scale the platform, launch a new app for students, and expand beyond its sports offerings (more here).

• Golden State Warriors are valued at $7 billion as minority shareholders put a stake up for sale. A collective of minority investors are considering selling their stake in the Golden State Warriors. The group is said to own just over 10% of the franchise (more here).

• Omada raises €7.1 million in seed funding round for international expansion of sports prediction game. The game, titled as a ‘social prediction mobile game for sports fans’ intends to use the investment to fuel international growth following a two-year run that’s netted the game 300,000 monthly players in France and 1 million worldwide (more here).

• TXV Partners launches "Evolution" fund and transforms into a top US minority sports investment firm. The minority-led private equity firm backed by CAZ Investments focuses on the sports and consumer-healthcare sectors (more here).

• American Airlines Center receives a $20 million upgrade. Leadership from the Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Stars, and American Airlines Center revealed a brand new video board this week. The super-high resolution video board cost $10 million of the total $20 million spent on upgrading the downtown Dallas arena (more here).

• WBD’s Andrew Georgiou among investors in new athlete fund. Athletico Venture. The athlete investment fund set up by former Sportfive executive Arthur Bernard, has launched its first collective vehicle dedicated to investing in start-ups (more here).

• NeuroTrainer secures $1.5 million in funding to pioneer cognitive training In athletics. NeuroTrainer, a trailblazer at the intersection of neuroscience and VR closes its seed funding round, led by 9.58 Ventures (more here).

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 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS & COLLABS
24/7 Pickleball Mania

• Angel City welcomes Mindera as its newest founding partner. Angel City announced Mindera, a global tech company, as the club's Official Software Engineering Founding Partner to support digital transformation and empower tech learning in the local community (more here).

• Professional Pickleball and Tennis Channel deepen media partnership with 24/7 streaming channel. As part of the partnership, Tennis Channel will produce all PPA Tour events and have the rights to broadcast a vast majority of them on its pay-TV network and streaming platforms (more here).

• Peloton and Lululemon join forces. The two companies announced a five-year partnership that will bring Peloton’s content to Lululemon’s exercise app. Lululemon in turn will become Peloton’s primary athletic apparel partner, and a select number of Peloton’s instructors will become ambassadors for the apparel retailer (more here).

• WHOOP unveils the new WHOOP Coach powered by OpenAI. WHOOP Coach takes an in-depth knowledge of a WHOOP member’s goals, their unique biometric data, and the latest performance science and generates highly individualized, conversational responses to their health and fitness questions – all within seconds (more here).

• Chelsea gets Premier League approval for Infinite Athlete to become shirt sponsor. After nearly two months of waiting and nearly three months of not having a front-of-shirt sponsor, Chelsea’s sponsorship agreement with the sports data company Infinite Athlete has been finally approved by the Premier League (more here).

• Cricket World Cup will feature a Web3 fan app as ICC taps into Near blockchain. The International Cricket Council (ICC) has partnered with Near Foundation to build a blockchain-powered Web3 fan engagement app for the 2023 Cricket World Cup in India, which promises to reach hundreds of millions of fans over the next six weeks (more here).

• Vox Media partners with NBA players Andre Iguodala and Evan Turner’s media company, New Amendment, to bring their podcast, Point Forward, to SB Nation and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Created at a generational tipping point in how consumers digest sports media, Point Forward is hosted by former teammates and current best friends, who hold honest and open discussions about business, culture, tech, and, of course, sports (more here).

• Mountain West and Magnifi join forces for real-time highlights. The Mountain West announced an exciting new partnership with Magnifi, naming the tech company as an innovation partner for AI-powered sports content across baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, and volleyball (more here).

• Tottenham Hotspur taps Chiliz blockchain for Web3 fan token. Tottenham Hotspur is partnering with Chiliz to become the latest English Premier League team to tap into blockchain technology to issue and manage its own Web3 fan token to drive supporter engagement and rewards (more here).

🔊 OTHER HYPE
Does AI Pose A Threat To Sports Betting?

• How AI and AR could increase the risk of problem gambling for online sports betting. With technology rapidly advancing, the future of sports betting could be even more worrying as gambling companies look to AI and AR to enhance their offerings (more here).

• The untapped potential of athletes' data. The use of data in the sports industry has evolved rapidly with sophisticated machine-learning algorithms and now AI. Sports teams, leagues, and organizations leverage this data to gain insights into player performance, fan engagement, and operational efficiency (more here).

• AI-powered audience growth: How Esports uses artificial intelligence to connect with fans. Today, eSports, which commands only a relatively niche audience, is using advanced machine learning to help game development evolve into enhanced player experiences (more here).

• Can AI score big in the future of sports? Five key trends shaping the industry. AI has the ability to accelerate this growth through increasing sports engagement, analysis, and forecasting, along with delivering real-time data to players, broadcasters, sponsors, and fans, cementing AI's role in the sports business (more here).

• 11 sports tech startups to watch according to investors. 2022 was a record year for sports tech funding in Europe, but which sports tech startups have investors got their eye on at the moment? To find out, Sifted spoke to VCs from Boost Capital Partners, Active Partners, and Moonfire Ventures (more here).

• 26 top venture capital firms and other investors pouring millions into sports, from online gambling to tech startups. Insider is highlighting prominent VC investors who are funding startups in sports. The list includes early-stage investors with funds of varying sizes and different sector expertise, but all view sports as a core focus area and have made significant investments in the category in the last 12 months (more here).

• NFL center reveals technology he implements in his training that was used during the Iraq War. Drew Dalman had a scientific advantage when he was playing center at Stanford. While playing for the Cardinal, the now Atlanta Falcons center got his hands on some new technology from doctors at the school in order to cool his body down (more here).