🔊 Huge News For The PGA

📰 TOP STORY
The PGA Has Had A Busy Week

• PGA Tour secures $3 billion from investors and launches PGA Tour Vision. Strategic Sports Group, headed by Fenway Sports Group’s John Henry, led the investment. It includes a variety of investors, private equity names, and sports owners, including Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, New York Mets Owner Steve Cohen, Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, and Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck (more here). On Thursday, the league also announced the release of PGA TOUR Vision, a new app for golf fans to experience golf and follow PGA TOUR tournaments. The app was developed for and coincided with the drop of the Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s revolutionary VR headset which blends digital content with the physical world (more here).

💰 MONEY MOVES 
Splash Sports Closes A2 Funding Round

• Splash Sports closes funding round of $14.1 million. Investors include venture capital firms Boston Seed, Velvet Sea Ventures, K5, Elysian Park, Acies Investments, Accomplice, and Counterview, among others (more here).

• Brazil-based sports betting company raises PlayGreen raises $6 million. The sports betting and gaming company said that Vice Ventures led the funding round. The money will be used to facilitate PlayGreen’s expansion into Ecuador, as it continues to pioneer sports betting for the underserved LatinX market (more here).

• GamePLAI raises £1.5 million to accelerate growth. The emerging supplier of automated trading products for global sportsbooks has secured funding from a group of heavyweight industry names, including Pinnacle’s former trading director Marco Blume, as it aims to expand its market footprint (more here).

• ALT Sports Data announces the closing of a $2.5 million seed round. The round was co-led by Eberg Capital and Relay Ventures, with additional participation from Trinity West Ventures, NuFund Venture Group, and several notable sports and technology industry veterans (more here).

• GameOn receives a $GAME grant from Sportsology. The grant will see GameOn receive 59,000,000 $GAME tokens. In return, GameOn will integrate the $GAME platform into upcoming major league projects to provide unified experiences and rewards across its ecosystem, including GameOn LALIGA and GameOn PFL (more here).

 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS & ACQUISITIONS
BetMGM Partners With X For Sports Betting

• X partners with BetMGM ahead of the Super Bowl. X is set to display gambling stats via a partnership with BetMGM. Details on the deal were scarce, but the social media platform will display betting info via MGM's sports betting division and then provide a link to the gambling platform (more here).

• Google Cloud and PMY partner with LIV Golf. Under the partnership, Google Cloud and PMY will work on projects with several major sports and lifestyle brands, including a multi-year agreement with LIV Golf (more here).

• UFC partners with Fanatics. The two signed an exclusive multi-year trading card partnership that sees Topps make an exciting return to the sport. The agreement was negotiated in consultation with UFC’s licensing agent IMG (more here).

• SlamBall partners with ProhiBet. ProhiBet will play a pivotal role in preventing specific individuals such as athletes, coaches, officials, and administration from engaging in prohibited sports wagering around SlamBall (more here).

• Major League Rugby teams up with Sportable. In collaboration with Sportable, the leader in the development of wearable tracking technology and data analytics, each nationally broadcast game ball will be outfitted with a unique data tracking device that will measure speed, distance traveled, and other unique metrics (more here).

• TeamSnap partners with SquadLocker. SquadLocker, the leading custom team apparel software, and fulfillment service, announced a strategic partnership with TeamSnap, the leading provider of sports management software and online community for everything youth sports (more here).

• Playfly Sports acquires Evolution Sports. Now as part of Playfly Sports, Evolution will work with Playfly’s US team to maximize the commercial potential of its clients through unique activations and sponsorships (more here).

• Cantaloupe acquires CHEQ. Cantaloupe, Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end technology solutions for self-service commerce, announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Cheq Lifestyle Technology, Inc. (more here).

🔊 OTHER SPORTS NEWS
Baltimore Orioles Sell To Pair Of Private Equity Billionaires

• The Orioles prepare for private equity control. The Angelos family has sold the team to two P.E. billionaires, David Rubenstein, and Mike Arougheti, for $1.725 billion (more here).

• Billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolling the ‘Olympics on steroids’ event that allows athletes to dope. The venture which is aimed at aiding research into nutritional supplements and biohacks that push the boundaries of human performance, is the brainchild of Dr. Aron D’Souza, a lawyer by training who famously conceived Thiel’s lawsuit against Gawker Media (more here).

• Flutter is now trading on the NYSE. Flutter, the parent company of sports betting and gaming giant FanDuel, began trading on the NYSE on Monday, under the ticker FLUT (more here).

• RFK Racing launches RFK TeK Alliance to bolster Motorsports Innovation. RFK Racing, a championship-winning organization in each of NASCAR’s National Series, has announced the formation of the RFK TeK Alliance, a cutting-edge technology unit aimed at pushing the boundaries of innovation and performance within the racing industry (more here).

• 15 basketball-focused tech startups to watch out for. Basketball has been on the rise and more startups are entering the sport. Here are 15 we’ve highlighted that you should look out for (more here).

• Tom Brady is merging his nutrition and apparel brands with training company Nobull. As part of the deal, Brady will become the No. 2 shareholder in Nobull, behind BodyArmor founder Mike Repole who bought the company last year (more here).

• EA Sports CEO shares his thoughts on a sports metaverse. In Electronic Arts‘ earnings conference call, an analyst asked EA CEO Andrew Wilson what he thought about the opportunity for building a metaverse from EA’s various sports silos (more here).

• Catapult releases its 2024 Sports Trends and Predictions Report. Catapult, the global performance technology leader in elite sports, published its inaugural report on 2024 Sports Trends and Predictions (more here).