🔊 This AI-Driven Sports Media Company Raised $20M In 4 Years

📰 TOP STORY
AI-Driven Sports Media Company Raises Funding From Top Investors

• ScorePlay Raises $13M. ScorePlay, an AI-powered digital, media & production company for the sports industry, has raised a $13M Series A round. Investors in this round include 20VC fund founder Harry Stebbings, Reddit co-founder & Seven Seven Six partner Alexis Ohanian, NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, former F1 champion Nico Rosberg, and soccer star and former captain of the US women’s national team Alex Morgan. In 2023, the company raised a Seed round from investors including Mario Götze, NBA star Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s 35V, Raphaël Varane, Nayef Aguerd, and Alejandro Bedoya. This new round of funding aims to help ScorePlay expand its product offerings and staff. The technology uses AI to help sports teams streamline content by storing, tagging, and distributing game clips. So far, clients include more than 200 sports organizations globally including NBA, NWSL, MLS, NHL, FIBA, UEFA, and LGPA, as well as teams such as Eintracht Frankfurt, AS Monaco, West Ham United FC, Aston Villa Football Club, and Inter Miami CF. What makes ScorePlay so appealing in my opinion is the timing. Sports team and league valuations have been on a tear over the past couple of years, but the main reason for this is media and IP. Sports is becoming increasingly important to cable TV, and massive streaming platforms. If you look at the top most-watched US broadcasts in 2024, sports delivered 80 of the 100. Super Bowl LVIII was the top most-watched in 2024 with 123.7M viewers and this year’s Super Bowl LIX just set the record for the most-viewed Super Bowl of all time with 127.7M viewers (I recently watched an interview with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris where he discusses this in detail). ScorePlay has built an incredibly valuable product, but we can’t overlook the role and importance of storytelling and its convergence with the globalization of sports content. Fans are craving content and it’ll only continue to trend upward. Great product + competent team + excellent market timing = success (more here).

💰 MONEY MOVES 
Maverick Carter Leads $100M Youth Sports Investment

• Rocket Youth Raises $100M. Rocket Youth, a youth startup founded less than a year ago, has raised over $100M from a group led by Maverick Carter, the business manager of NBA superstar LeBron James, as it looks to expand in the booming kids sports sector. Daniel Sillman, CEO of media firm Relevent Sports which he co-founded with billionaire Stephen Ross, joined Carter. Investment firm ZBS Partners also took part. Rocket Youth sells several services such as accounting and business development to companies running athletic and enrichment programs for the youth. The company serves sports such as volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics (more here).

• Lingopal.ai Raises $14M. Lingopal.ai, a real-time speech-to-speech translation company, raised $14M in Serie A funding. The round was led by DCM Ventures, with participation from Scrum Ventures, Marquee Ventures, and several angel investors. Lingopal specializes in real-time speech-to-speech translation, allowing any live stream’s audio to be translated into over 120 languages in real-time while preserving the tone of each speaker. They’ve partnered with several sports industry companies to expand sports audiences (more here).

• GoRally Raises $750K. India-based Pickleball chain GoRally has raised Rs 6.6 crore (or $750K) in a Pre-Seed funding round to fuel its rapid expansion and cement its leadership in India’s booming pickleball ecosystem. The round was led by Sujeet Kumar (Co-Founder, Udaan; ex-Head of Ops, Flipkart), with participation from investors including Mohit Kumar & Vatsal Singhal (Founders, Ultrahuman), Viren Singhvi (ex- CFO of American Razor Safety co), Kartik Kapoor (East Africa Racquet Sports), Abhishek Goyal (Founder & CEO, Tracxn), Deepak Singh (Founder & CEO, Gameskraft & AnzyGlobal), Arjun Vaidya (Founder, V3 Ventures & Dr Vaidya’s), Bharat Founders Fund, an IITD syndicate, and several US investors (more here).

• Stepout Raises $500K. StepOut, an Indian sports performance analysis and ecosystem tech startup, has raised $500K in its Seed round led by Rainmatter. IndigoEdge, Marwah Sports Group, and Misfits Capital also participated in the round. Founded by Jeet Karmakar and Sayak Ghosh, StepOut automates the tedious manual data collection process traditionally handled by coaches and analysts with a remote AI-powered SaaS setup. The platform assists in identifying players and tracks every event on the field to ensure 99% data accuracy. StepOut currently works with teams such as AFC Ajax and Rayo Vallecano (more here).

• Chelsea Owner Todd Boehly Buys Stake In The Hundred's Trent Rockets. Chelsea co-owner and billionaire Todd Boehly has joined the ranks of investors in the new English cricket league the Hundred after his Cain International group agreed to pay nearly £40M for a stake in Trent Rockets. The Rockets, based at Nottinghamshire’s Trent Bridge, became the seventh of the eight teams to go to auction and attracted a winning bid for a 49% minority holding (more here).

• Kiro Race Co Welcomes New Investors. Kiro Race Co, the newest team competing in the FIA Formula E World Championship as CUPRA KIRO announced an expanded ownership group of highly strategic investors. Joining lead investors David Kaplan and Bennett Rosenthal, the group now includes: Golden Globe-winning actor and producer Idris Elba; major league sports team owners Tony Ressler, Larry Berg, and Shaun Neff; media deal-makers Navid Mahmoodzagedan, Steve Bornstein, and Rick Hess; and strategic advisors Jeffrey Assaf, Caleb Kramer and Michael Woronoff (more here).

• Torrent Group Acquire Majority Stake In Gujarat Titans. Torrent Group, a diversified conglomerate, through its holding company Torrent Investments Private Limited, has agreed to acquire a majority stake of 67% in the renowned Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise, Gujarat Titans from Irelia Company Pte Ltd. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and approvals (more here).

 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS
The Future Of Athlete-Owned Data

• FIFPRO & Sports Data Labs Form Partnership. FIFPRO, the global association of soccer unions, announced a partnership with Sports Data Labs to create an athlete and union-controlled data platform for players in its member organizations. The platform will allow athletes to store, access, and share performance and personal data. The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to help athletes better understand their bodies with a repository of their data and eventually monetize it based, on the player's consent (more here).

• Formula 1 & Allwyn Form Partnership. Motor racing’s top-tier F1 series has brought in multi-national lottery operator Allwyn as a new global commercial partner from the 2025 season onwards. Allwyn will receive brand visibility across McLaren Racing cars and on the uniforms of drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The company will additionally receive promotion on touchpoints across the McLaren Shadow Sim Racing and F1 Academy teams (more here).

• LGPA & Hero Digital Partner On New App. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and Hero Digital, announced the launch of its revamped mobile app. For the first time, the LPGA Tour app will allow fans to create an account, enabling quick access to scores and statistics from their favorite players. Users can also set push notifications and access an attendee dashboard with interactive course maps for each event (more here).

🔊 ATHLETES & OTHER NEWS
Meet The New Owners Of The Minnesota Timberwolves

• Alex Rodriguez & Marc Lore Win Arbitration To Become Timberwolves Majority Owners. This week, arbitrators have ruled in favor of Rodriguez and Lore over current owner Glen Taylor in their long fight over the future of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx. After the NBA’s board of governors’ approval, the pair will become the team's majority owners. It’s unclear when exactly Rodriguez and Lore will officially take control of the franchises (more here).

• CNBC Releases Official NBA Team Valuations 2025. The average NBA team is worth $4.66B, according to CNBC Sport’s official NBA valuations. The most valuable team is the Golden State Warriors, worth $9.4B. The biggest reason for the rising tide in NBA valuations has been the increase in national media rights, which are divided equally among the league’s 30 teams. In July, the NBA agreed to a new media rights package worth $76B over 11 years, beginning with the 2025-26 season (more here).

• USL Plans To Start League That Would Rival MLS. The United Soccer League announced plans to launch a Division One men's professional league in 2027 to rival Major League Soccer and defined by the sanctioning standards of the US Soccer Federation. The USL would operate completely separately from MLS, despite working under the same sanctioning by US Soccer as a professional soccer league (more here).

• New York Giants Looking To Sell Up To 10% Minority Stake To Private Equity. According to Sports Business Journal, The Giants are looking to sell up to 10% of the team. The team will not sell a majority stake or cede control, which has rested with current President John Mara or his family since his grandfather, Tim Mara, founded the team in 1925. Since 1991, the Tisch and Mara families have each owned 50% of the club, with a long list of individual family members holding small stakes. The Giants franchise’s estimated value has ranged recently from $7.3B (Forbes) to $7.85B (CNBC) (more here).

• Tom Brady Acquires 50% Stake In CardVault. Seven-time Super Bowl winner, Tom Brady has purchased a 50% stake in a Boston-based sports card and memorabilia chain, which has changed its name to “CardVault by Tom Brady” as a result of the deal. The retailer, founded in 2020, currently has locations inside TD Garden, Gillette Stadium, and Foxwoods Resort Casino, with a location next to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey set to open in the spring. The company intends to “go global, with new stores planned across the US and in major international markets,” thanks to Brady’s investment (more here).

• Links Golf Club Purchases First US Golf Course. Links Golf Club is a digital collection of members, now totaling over 7,000 across 40 countries, comprised of mostly young, tech-forward millennial and Gen-Z golfers. In 2021, CEO Jim Daily and his COO Mike Dudas formed LinksDAO to make golf more accessible, and within three weeks the organization had raised more than $12M. Links Golf Club’s first project entailed acquiring a Scottish course, Spey Bay Golf Course. Now, they’re looking to acquire their first project in the US (more here).

• Why This PE Firm Is Investing In Women's Sports. Private equity firm Atwater Capital thinks women's sports are massively undervalued. The firm made its first investment in sports last year through League One Volleyball. Atwater, which invests in media and entertainment businesses, contributed to a $100M investment in the league. While the valuations of some professional women's sports teams have risen in recent years, Atwater founder Vania Schlogel said the value of media rights still hasn't caught up with demand (more here).

• How One CFL Pro Athlete Advises His Fellow Athletes. Adam Bighill is already living his life after football. The linebacker for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL is a three-time Grey Cup winner, a six-time CFL All-Star, and a three-time winner of the CFL’s Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award. He has excelled in a physically and mentally demanding sport for almost fifteen years, far longer than the average pro football career. He’s done it all while becoming a financial advisor (more here).

• Pro Athletes' Moms Create Investment Management Network. Mother-child partnerships in professional sports and entertainment are reshaping the investment scene. Now, a trailblazing network of professional athletes’ mothers, League of Industry Moms, is changing how silent investment partners create a new way wealth management works in sports. These maternal figures serve as vital guardians for these elite performers' financial futures, as a hidden force behind many multi-million dollar deals (more here).