News, features & insights from the world of Sports Tech. Every Week.
Adding a monthly investment recap to our content calendar, starting with a summary of the Jan dealflow. Plus lots of ‘end-of-an-era’ type news in the sports world this week. Couldn’t help but include one that just broke a couple of hours ago – Hammer time is now in red.
Sports Tech Monthly Round-Up
Carrying on from our VC report, we thought it would be interesting to bring you a little monthly summary of investment dealflow. So starting from this edition, the first newsletter of the new month will include a recap of SportsTech investment activity of the previous month.
The newsletter has the highlights, on the link below you’ll find more in-depth data. A snapshot from our SportsTechDB
Here’s the data from January 2024.
January 2024
| $60.4 million Funding | $406.6million M&A | 23 Deals Cracked |
Funding wise, not the most aggressive start to the year, for context Nov & Dec 2023 cleared $175m. Instead the strong M&A dealflow continues.
- Geography: Most of the activity remains in the US, 68% of the funding amount and 98% of the M&A amount.
- Sectors: Funding sees a pretty even split between solutions ‘For Athletes’ and solutions ‘For Fans’ – 42%-47%. Solutions ‘For Executives’ remains at its steady-eddie 10-12% (11% this time)
- Top Deals: $14 million in funding for real-money gaming platform Splash Sports and the more recent $250 million acquisition of Two Circles
As seen in previous years, Jan has usually been a slow-ish month for investment announcements. Jan 2024 is higher than Jan 2023 (only just) so there is room for optimism. But clearly the ‘cautiously optimistic’ sentiment is still doing the rounds.
Feature Story
SportsTech AllStars for January: VC Report Startups
For the month of January, we focused on sports startups that were featured in our 2023 Global Sports Tech VC Report. These are the best of sport tech, with their revolutionary technologies changing the sports experience.
Know more about:
🎙️ Mingle Sport from CEO Freek Bijl
🎙️ Respo.Vision from Co-Founder Mateusz Szala
🎙️ SportsCentrAll from CEO Philip Steyn
GO PRO = PRO (GSTVCR23 + SportsTechDB)
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The PRO Edition of the Global SportsTech Report is packed with 17 additional pages of data & insights. That’s nearly half the free LITE edition added on.
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Top News from the World of Sports Tech
🏀 The NBA named 5 startups for its third Launchpad accelerator program, which included 3 companies (Reboot Motion, Plantiga and Tonsser) focused on advancing the game and 2 centered (TextQL and Dimension) on enhancing fan experience.
⚽ Wolves players were introduced to ‘daylight glasses‘ that’ll help them boost focus and be alert during evening matches.
🏒 TruGolf unveiled the details surrounding the E6 APEX simulator, for the first time, at the 2024 PGA Merchandise Show.
Not Sports Tech but you should know:
🏎️ In a shocking switch, Lewis Hamilton is set to join Ferrari from the 2025 Formula 1 season, leaving Mercedes one year before the end of their tenure. (Not really news we’d normally include but the shock was too much to not be shared)
🏆 Formula One’s parent company Liberty Media has been named the world’s most valuable sports empire for 2024 by Forbes, with a $18.22 billion valuation. Though it is a 12% drop from last year.
🚫 The LPGA Tour and the LET’s merger was blocked by PIF led Gold Saudi’s intervention, requesting to analyze the merger’s terms.
💸 Real Madrid surpassed Man City to top Deloitte’s Football Money League with record revenues of €831m, an increase of €118m over the last year.
🚤 Italian carmaker Ferrari wants to enter world sailing competitions ‘to enhance their technological know how’, teaming up with Giovanni Soldini as team principal
Money Talks:
💰 Denver based provider of peer-to-peer sports strategy games, Splash, raised $14.1 million in Series A2 funding round which included Elysian Park, Boston Seed and others.
💰 Brazilian Sports Media company Playgreen raised $6 million in a round led by Vice Ventures.
💰 California based AI data analytics startup TextQL raised $4.1 million in Pre-Seed funding led by Neo and DCM.
💰 Indian fitness coaching app FITTR raised $3.5 million from Rainmatter, the investment arm of stock broker Zerodha.
💰 Nodwin Gaming announced acquisition of Comic Con India, 100% shares at a valuation of ₹55 crore ($6.6 million).
💰 LA Clippers star Russell Westbrook has invested an undisclosed amount in Arizona Athletic Grounds, the 320-acre sports complex, to improve basketball programming.
🤝 US based motorsports group RAFA Racing Club has acquired Grid Finder, a sim racing community platform, for an undisclosed amount.
🤝 FairPlay Sports Media has acquired sports technology and data platform Quarter4 for an undisclosed amount, right after unveiling their new brand identity.
🤝 US based fitness equipment firm WaterRower has acquired rival CITYROW in an undisclosed deal.
🤝 TGI Sport has acquired Insignia Sports International for an undisclosed amount, becoming the world’s biggest cricket talent agency. Stars such as Kieron Pollard, Rashid Khan, Jofra Archer and Sophie Devine will now join TGI.
🤝 Hockey equipment’s premier destination, Pure Hockey, has announced its latest expansion, acquiring Iowa based JT’s Slap Shot for an undisclosed amount as well.
Latest from our channels
🎙️ #193 SportCentrAll: The all-in-one Sports App for Clubs, Coaches, Players and Fans
SportCentrAll has built an entire sporting ecosystem that is designed to provide easy and affordable tools to help clubs, schools, athletes, players, coaches and administrators achieve their goals. All in one, single app. Watch the full video here.
📣 Here’s a 60 mins snapshot of the most important findings from SportsTechX’s latest Global SportsTech VC Report 2023. Covering data & insights from another interesting year for SportsTech.
💸 Sports Tech AllStars Recap: VC’s in SportsTech
⚡ STX Weekly: Last week’s newsletter, in case you missed it.